Elite Dangerous - How The Heck Did It Come to THIS?! The Thargoid Situation

So how on Earth did it come to this? Events in Elite Dangerous, that are now seven years in the making, have over-spilled into what may well prove to be somewhat of a disaster.
The Thargoids are Coming, and maybe in a new form! Or at least that is how it seems.
The so called Stargoids - space anomalies widely believed to be Thargoid in origin, are now visible from Earth. We don’t yet know what it means…but we do know how we got here - and in many ways it is all a bit of a mess, stemming from numerous problems that could easily been avoided.
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[@cnoyes72]

The thargoids are taking so long to arrive because they have to grind mine the fuel for their ships as well as the credits to keep them from getting re-possessed.

[@branjosnow6244]

They've probably been ganked so many times, they're likely to just call off the attack.

[@MsRmaclaren]

You mean they have to grind their way like the rest of us schmucks? lmao. Love your post.

[@GoogleIsNotYourFriend]

Or they are already here but on another instance...If I was a thargoid I'd be playing solo for sure.

[@JoshuaFraserK]

Nah. The Thargoids computers can only handle 3.8 and they only play solo.

[@quantum5661]

in the years since "the thargoids are coming" i got a pc, a drivers license, a monitor, a lawsuit, a mice problem, and a new desk. the thargoids are horribly fucking slow.

[@exiletsj2570]

The Elite cycle: something interesting is just about to happen>Thing happens>Anticlimax>Community backlash>Fdev issue apology and promises to do better.

[@oomwat6101]

>Fdev does better for two or three weeks>Fdev forgets and goes silent for a year or so>Fdev announces something interesting is about to happen ..

[@cmdrHeliaxx]

nope, the HIP 22460 event for example really pleased most of the community. And this will be no different 😎

[@digitalbarrito3555]

The Thargoids have been coming for the last like 5 years. I stopped caring after the first event when it was abundantly clear we were going to get piecemealed slices of interesting community engagement for it to turn out to be nothing more than a "tune in next time" and then wait for another year before something interesting happens again, all the while grinding endlessly for nothing because the gameplay loops are shallow and boring.

[@support2587]

@@Medieval1-1 And yet you play?

[@cmdrHeliaxx]

@@Medieval1-1 seems like you can't exactly grasp the Meaning of "for example". Of course there's been many enjoyable Story points, this video literally covers some of them lol. Discovering of the Thargoid artifacts, barnacles, sites, hyperdictions, but also all stuff guardian.... If you look at the videos from that time, you literally Will find everyone enjoying those. I joined some 3 years back tho, so I haven't been there when these played out. Also maybe, if the game's such a trash, maybe high time to stop watching videos about it lol, that's gotta be some diagnosis to keep watching videos about a game you stopped playing many years back And think Is bad lol.

[@THINKMACHINE]

The serious lack of peaceful interactions with thargoids really did and still does shoot the whole plotline in the foot.

[@DevSolar]

I had no issue whatsoever to ignore the thargoids completely and still enjoy the game. Not being able to just let them be is the whole moral of the storyline...

[@anjayl]

I agree with OP. I was all hyped and while exploring the galaxy had a whole "first contact" speech ready when rumors of thargoids first emerged. Then they arrived, and it was just all shooty-shooty... I was very disappointed and lost most of my interests.

[@zerogravity2140]

Remember the Thargoids aren’t big on talking as the Guardians kept trying to peacefully talk things out, but the goids rather exterminate any race that inhabits a world they seeded accidental or not.

[@PeferG17]

Only good bug is a dead bug.

[@Kdotslytheronin]

Thargoids canonically arent known for concepts like but not limited to: diplomacy, communication, peace, and live and let live. They are known however for: shoot first and dont bother with questions, violence, and xenocide. If Im not mistaken Fdev pretty much told us how thargoids would treat humanity before the first thargoid ever popped up.

[@WingC3]

The high point of this whole saga was indeed 2017. I can't believe it's been 5 years. But the level of creativity behind the probes and links and audio waveforms was incredible. I remember watching people explain how they'd discovered the signals in Audacity. I thought it was all a bunch of internet conspiracy nonsense, but then people actually started using it to pinpoint new base locations and the bases were actually THERE. At the time I expected some degree of continuation to this process: decoding their language or codes, leading to communication of some form. But then it looks like someone at Frontier just went... "nah, let's do 3D space invaders." Very disappointing, and one of the reasons I haven't played since the Odyssey beta.

[@SusannaSaunders]

Totally agree with your summary! 👍😘

[@jameskennedy2353]

your saying 2017 was 5 years ago!!!!!! wtf happened to time lmao

[@narutov4]

I agree something I was actually expecting to do more or see was decoding their language and discovering ways to interreact with the thargoids more.

[@rumdog117]

I was thinking the same thing. I play on Xbox and was absolutely taken by the game. It was the space game I've waited for my whole life. Of course that changed when they kicked us to the curb. My thought then was that it was a dead man walking game at that point. I will say it was a good ride while it lasted.

[@az-wr1lb]

//@@jameskennedy2353: your saying 2017 was 5 years ago!!!!!! wtf happened to time lmao // Covid consumed 2 of those 5 years otherwise we're back in 2020

[@SpartasEdge]

The tragedy is, this game plays well, but i lost interest in it a long time ago, because there is nothing new or interesting in it.

[@bigfunny6312]

My problem is when I undock, there's as much to do while docked. Nothing really. Last time I played, I just undocked, decided it wasn't worth the effort, and back.

[@SpartasEdge]

@@bigfunny6312 Yep, that about sums it up. Some more mission diversity, both space and flying/driving on the planet surface wouldn't go amiss.

[@zach942]

If they just added player owned colonies star systems space stations fleets and pvp warfare on a galactic scale that's what I always wanted out of a game like elite sadly won't be in this game

[@OrilliousTyr]

@@SpartasEdge 100% agree. I've been wanting to see further development of the basic missions for years. I think it would do more to freshen up Elite than anything else.

[@BGIANAKy]

@@zach942 that’s too much ambition.

[@wrofiir9697]

People expecting on-foot thargoids about to be disappointed. I think we are getting Thargoid megaships with the usual missions to disable pieces of them.

[@Altroo]

I too think they are megaships, the exact same megaships found in the pleiades, the one with the unknown device, it looks like a big mega ship crash site, or merged with the surface.

[@tellmewhenitsover]

I would be surprised if we so much as got a single new model in the game.

[@dedompler]

@@tellmewhenitsover FD delivering something that doesn't feel placeholder and hackneyed? pft, wake me up on the day

[@wrofiir9697]

Even my tiny expectations were too much. The megaship isnt done yet so its just a caustic cloud with a placeholder scout in the center.

[@trollsmyth]

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When the primary (often only) tool you have on your ship to interact with the wider universe is a gun...

[@Cretaal]

Performing stimulus response check in 3. 2. 1.

[@barking_mad6649]

Except that's not true.

[@fistsofsnake5475]

yeah we totally have no scaners, and one of them isn't pernamenty put in a ship. totally only guns

[@barking_mad6649]

@@fistsofsnake5475 sad thing is 33 idiots agreed with the post.

[@Jenna_Talia]

@@fistsofsnake5475 To be fair though when Thargoids were first introduced none of those scanners gave us anything when used on thargoids, and they still don't for the most part, only the basic information needed to fight it is given.

[@valorin5762]

Humans always shoot first I fear... It didn't help though, that there weren't any other ways of interacting. Being an explorer and no combat player at all I did my share of experimenting with different types of cargo and so on with Thargoids and followed the story closely when they first arrived. I remember dimly that there were a few turning points where players were able to decide for weapons when AEGIS started to be a thing, and being shown the consequences of mankind's doing and crimes the first time around with the INRA bases. In the end though, I think this is also a "If I have a hammer" kind of situation and a big part of it is also the fact that _players_ made the decision, not their Commanders. There's lots and lots of combat players in the game who completely ignore and don't care for lore or storytelling, or roleplaying in the game and really just play to shoot things (which is totally legit, it's a game after all and shooting things in space is one way to have fun with it). So the percentages of actual Commanders who were against shooting versus those who tried to give peace a chance and be more careful were largely tipped into the fire-on-sight direction by people who completely didn't care about the vote because their game was shooting things and they didn't care about the ingame world at all. I'm not saying things would have been different if every single player would base their decision to shoot or not on their Commander's opinion, because well, humans are humans and history tells us that, sadly, humans mostly try to solve problems by violence and tend to shoot when there's things they don't understand or is alien to them. Buuuut... You know, if you have a hammer all your problems look like nails, and that's another factor I think. Elite has a lot more hammers than other things for interaction which is my forever-complaint about the game. I'm an explorer, I want instruments, mining tools instead of blasters and do something with the readings my scanners give me and so on and so forth. These days I barely play actually not because I think Fdev screwed up or anything, but the direction the game takes is uninteresting for me. I love how there's finally something big happening with those Thargoids and kinda hope it will be a dramatic turn of events and good for the game. Just that it will most likely be 90% combat-related and thus not really for me.

[@Jenna_Talia]

Yeah. Biggest game map of all time, that takes literal weeks of consistent play to get from one side to the other, and yet there's less content in it than a CSGO map. They're onto something with procedural generation for making the background noise of the galaxy but the problem is there's too much background noise. Anything that's unique is just thrown a thousand lightyears away from sol at maximum so there's just a galactic graveyard where all you can do is jump from system to system, honk your horn and press a few buttons, maybe even scan a planet, then move on. It's shit.

[@valorin5762]

@@Jenna_Talia yes, I expected an answer like that at some point because there's always at least one. 😀 Easy fix: if it's no fun for you, don't play and if you have an urge to comment on something that is not for you, either don't or maybe start your judgment with an "I think", because the galaxy simulation is the reason a lot of people play. I had a lot of fun with it as well. 😀

[@anjayl]

The same way there is open play or solo... I would have liked a server for the pewpew players and a server for roleplayers where interactions with thargoids would have been more mature

[@valorin5762]

@@anjayl Yeah... An open battle thing like CQC that is so attractive, most shooting-only people go there and won't interfere with the storytelling that way. Many people really only play the game as a space shooter and really don't care for anything else. Would be perfect for those and for those who want the story.

[@MichaelCordeiro]

Yeah humanity shot first here, no doubt. The question is whether players ever actually had the choice to alter this timeline or if FDev simply chose the path ahead of time. Looking at the 2 endings of Elite First Encounters like you mentioned, one ending was peaceful and resulted in the alien lifeform sharing their technology. Peace with the Thargoids is absolutely viable but humans (the ones in power, unsurprisingly) are choosing violence.

[@Optix334]

Yeah no. The Guardian lore definitively shows that peaceful thargoids is not viable. Throughout their interactions with the thargoids, they tried peace and the thargoids either never answered or never agreed. This isn't a "humans bad" situation. This is just the thargoids being violent, and the story could not have played out any differently. The only inherently bad elements are the thargoids, and FDev's writing.

[@stefanmannn]

ED: a fantastic universe with absolutely zero content.

[@gaming_for_sanity]

The content used to be on the forums until they banned all the accounts with dissenting opinions

[@StonedDead1981]

All that content is actually in game. It's just in the 90+% of the systems we haven't found yet. ;)

[@MastaSquidge]

@@saleseng stop with that shit cope man. Its just being apologetic for garbage development. There is no content. Its about 10 randomly generated things copy and pasted a few billion times. They had all the chances and all the requests in the world to develop a story for this game and every single chance they got they pissed it away and did nothing.

[@10siWhiz]

@@MastaSquidge do you still play the game? Not everyone needs to be spoon fed narrative. It can be appreciated as a galaxy sim space nerd exploration game. Giving frontier criticism is absolutely due but getting all emotional and bent out of shape is a bit dramatic.

[@turdfurguson4451]

@@10siWhiz exactly

[@stratis1274]

The Thargoids were a good way to get people interested but the fact that it's taken so long and so many resources put into this one side of the galaxy is the problem, as Ant pointed out the moment players started finding barnacles people really got into the game to see what else was out there but now that drive is gone because there isn't anything else out there but Thargoids and that's the biggest issue for players ya know here's all the places you can go but it's all the same except this one area where a story has at a snails pace unfolded.

[@Rigel_Chiokis]

Two months ago, I was about 56,000 light years from Sol and found a Thargoid sensor on a planet. Think about that!

[@Yotta_Guns]

All they gave us was a gun. No puzzles, mini games, or questlines. So of course we started shooting. :l

[@paulbowler5345]

Still remember my first encounter with a Thargoid at a massive blue/white star,, it waa so haunting and mysterious. The in game story did drag out, but 2017 is still the high point of modern Elite Dangerous for me.

[@davekennedy6315]

I started playing in May 2017 and loved those crazy, busy interesting 7 months. Alas, it all soon slowed to a crawl at the start of 2018. I stopped playing until late 2018 and then gave up for good. Frontier just don't know what they're doing and I will never buy another of their games again. Kinda sad being that I first played the very original version of Elite in 1984.

[@paulbowler5345]

@@davekennedy6315 I started playing in 2017 as well. It waa a great time and the comunity waa so welcoming to newbie console players like me. Yeah, the Thargoid story got dragged out, but still enoyed it. I stopped playing when Ftontier stopped work on console support for ED. I miss the game. Never played the original, but remember playing few space games on the Amiga back in the day like Captain Blood and Awesome. 😀👍

[@davekennedy6315]

@@paulbowler5345 yeah I hear ya as I'm a console player too. I had become bored with Elite but was looking forward to Odyssey and the changes that it could bring and then BANG Frontier drops consoles altogether! It shows just how little they care about Elite and the multiplatform community it had built. But even if we had got Odyssey, just look at the snails pace of development! They have only had a few bug fixes update wise and that's about it, I honestly don't believe Elite will last much longer.

[@paulbowler5345]

@@davekennedy6315 Totally agree. I enjoyed Elite Dangerous and the shared vomunity platform so much. I loved exploring in the game. I have done memories of a comunity trip I joined to visit Colonia. It waa great. I waa really excited for Odysey but sadly Frontier ditched console players I miss ED but play No Man's Sky now, and the comunity is just as nice there.

[@davekennedy6315]

@@paulbowler5345 yeah I moved on to No Man's Sky myself and its a great game. NMS and its devs Hello Games are the perfect example of developers that actually CARE about their game and that continue improving and evolving the game to even greater heights. All of those incredible updates that all dwarf any of Frontiers usual feeble offerings and even better all completely FREE! Plus NMS has loads of microtransactions (skins, suits, paint jobs, trinkets etc) all FREE! Hello Games has the work ethic and love for their community that used to be more common 20+ years ago, when companies weren't just trying to squeeze every last penny from their loyal customers. On the opposite side you have Frontier trying its very hardest to be the next greedy, scummy EA or Activision. Its sad, especially as Frontier HQ is fairly local to me. I had really hoped that I could support them going forward but their treatment of Elite and its incredibly loyal, friendly and generally older and more chilled community is unforgivable. Frontier doesn't deserve us! It's a shame Frontier didn't sell Elite late 2018 (around about the time they seemed to have just given up on the game) on to another dev team that could have given the game the time and effort it deserved.

[@detritus23]

I think back to G’Kar’s example of the ant experiencing being picked up and set back down again. By design, the player doesn’t know what a Thargoid interaction was, what it meant, or what happened and has to fallback on their (baser) instincts in responding. The difference is that there are spoilers to bypass the act of personal discovery.

[@hanswichmann5047]

T-Goid ship kits now available in the ARK store! Get yours today!!!!

[@bamcorpgaming5954]

I had good memories playing elite, especially in VR. Feel like they couldve done way more with world building and choices as well as with the aliens.

[@LeoparditusRecords]

I wish we could have individual relationships with thargoids we encounter. I much despise fighting the thargoids because I myself am very curious about their societal structures, mannerisms, really everything, and I am left wishing I could have been on that leading edge of observation, before the warring and fighting took off, but I was always trailing behind those on the forefront of discoveries- and never have I been interdicted by one to see one myself. It's been disheartening for me, and I hadn't played in 3-4 years until recently again because of how distraught I've been at frontier. I will still always rock xeno-ally decals, even if I get my ships blown apart by thargoids, for what could have been hurts my heart.

[@MiataDriverX]

I've had hundreds of encounters with Thargoids, and never been attacked unprovoked. I've fed them tonnes of Meta-Alloys. Not sure if this has done something with my reputation to cause that. They weren't looking for a war, but the ED community apparently lacks the capacity for restraint.

[@teacherwayne6680]

In the 1984 game (or ish I was on my ZXSpectrum) fighting Thargoids was the high-end goal for most players. I have been mainly absent from the game for a while (I got bored of the endless grinding tbh). Saying that I do play it and roam around in my asp explorer, even playing on my steam deck now (well trying to). Elite is one of these games that pulls you in but then you drift aware once you realize not much has actually changed. I feel like I am in a cryo chamber popping out from time to time to see if anything new happens (like odyssey etc). I do wish personally it had more RPG elements (not community goals-based stuff). Frontier could add more to that side of the game I feel. Once again thanks for vid Ant, I watch your videos, log in to Elite have a peek then go back to playing retro games on my steam deck (including all earlier versions of Elite).

[@Midnight24435]

Hello fellow Steam Deck commander. If you haven't done it yet, under Graphics -> Quality, change Upscaling to "AMD FidelityFX CAS" and set the sharpening intensity to max. That really, really helps make menus more readable on the Steam Deck. I rarely see FPS drop below 60 in normal space and very rarely go below 30 in the very intense Odyssey sections which haven't been optimized yet.

[@moonasha]

elite dangerous is one of the most disappointing games I've ever played. Not because it was a bad game, but because it was a good game that never got fully developed into a great game. Once the luster wears off, you realize the game is an incredibly grindy mess with not much to do... and it could have been so much more

[@teacherwayne6680]

@@moonasha unfortunately I agree with you. A lot of grinding. However to make it a more rpg based game the amount of effort needed by a a small company like Frontier is out of the question. Frontier needs the Microsoft upgrade buyout treatment.

[@BadYossa]

I was 16 when Elite was released. Me and my mates were blown away by how good it was. Fast forward to being 55 and playing games in 4K. Utterly mental how far we've come.

[@Elwaves2925]

I'm a roughly 3 or 4 years younger and Elite was the game so many of us played during school lunchtime. Even back then, it was so involving and so ahead of it's time. To me, it might be the classic of all classic video games.

[@netshaman9918]

@@Elwaves2925 The best in the series is by far Fontier elite II. Played the first on Amstrad CPC 464, i was 18 then, i have 53 now ... ^^ Played ED at the start , and started to be disappointed as the promises were not held, beginning with all these cosmetics.

[@wilfridsephiroth9213]

Funnily enough, the game might look prettier, but the gameplay is still essentially the same.

[@Elwaves2925]

@@netshaman9918 Yeah, that's probably true. I still remember the 'scandal' over the Elite II release, when people thought they were being ripped off. They couldn't believe a game that big only came on a single 1.44mb floppy disk. 😁 Turns out it was just really good coding.

[@BadYossa]

@@Elwaves2925 yeah, it definitely was unlike anything else we'd seen. Happy memories

[@timchristensen2522]

When they were revealed, I went out to the Pleaides to have a look and see them for myself, but always stayed well away from landing on their sites or mining their resources. Will admit I plumbed the Guardian ruins a fair bit, but they're long gone... probably. Thargoids were always still here and I never fancied feeling like the neighbour that always stole from their cabbage patch! And if the Stargoids are now visible from Earth - well, it might be time to look into how that PS4 to PC migration works 😦

[@DayOldMeat]

I think Guardians are still alive and living in another dimension. Jasmina Halsey seemed to see them, and there's more 'out there' references to people seeing cities in Witchspace, but that might just be space madness.

[@ImBarryScottCSS]

The curated content has been one of the best things about E:D. It's really brought the community together trying to discover things, work through new problems together. I only wish there had been more of it and more frequent. The galaxy is so vast that trying to go out into the black to solve mysteries is deeply compelling gameplay.

[@MastaSquidge]

Its the only good thing, and they managed to screw that up constantly too.

[@julbot1]

Biggest issue with "choosing" war or peace with Thargoids has been that there was no real content developed to support peaceful interaction. All you can do is jettison meta-alloys for them to scoop up. So if players wanted peace, the majority of the playerbase would've had to decide to just not engage with the content being added.

[@e2rqey]

I really wish I had something positive to say about the Thargoids and ongoing narrative of Elite. The only thing I can really say is that it was an interesting idea conceptually. At no point was it given the time or resources it needed to actually be something cool. But that seems to be a broader issue with the game unfortunately.

[@GoogleIsNotYourFriend]

Agreed. I was there for the beginning and it was so cool, the mystery and awe, the thargoid concept is one of the best "alien" experiences I've seen in entertainment. Yet...I stopped playing years ago and it seems like literally nothing has changed.

[@SusannaSaunders]

Beyond being a concept and a base light show, it sadly died right there. That was the end of the road - not the beginning! 😢

[@GodsPoetryProductions]

The first time I played Elite dangerous is when the thargoids were blowing up the stations and I had to go in there to get some survivors then on my way out of that system a thargoid stopped me. It was epic for me.

[@Tobascodagama]

"a bit of a mess, stemming from numerous problems that could easily been avoided" A statement about the Thargoid storyline and NOTHING ELSE.

[@kakabixlis]

Great Video Ant liked it as always mate.Well as member of Operation Wytch Hunt ,i have to say we did caused damage in a BG level to Azimuth but still always being the guys with the shootie first then ask question who in the end won .I am no Goid lover but now we managed to invited them in our yards.

[@robinrichards6275]

There's nothing boldly new, (as in more ships, walk around in ships, multiple new storylines). I think they'll soon put this in maintenance mode or something close to it. I want to come back, I truly do. It was fun for those years. I fear the sun is setting on E:D.

[@thelionsam]

Great vid. Helped to frame the present events and prompted me to think about ‘asking questions later’ :)

[@jubjub64]

@ObsidianAnt Great video, loved the recap. Small note that around 3:25 there is a black screen where it seems there should be footage of an interdiction.

[@VRDaD]

Great video as usual. I always believed that Thargoids were not hostile. The fact that they didn't attack human ships if not carrying anything that would make them nervous was already a sufficient proof for me. Especially if my ship was an ASPx with no shields and could have been annhilated in a couple of seconds. Having said that...I did have my share of AX gamplay with my Chieftain...and loved it!

[@vorea]

As someone who plays Elite primarily for exploration and I play games typically as a strategist, I kind of regret doing some of the earlier Guardian ruins puzzles because it indirectly lead to this. Even though I was not part of figuring out the puzzles.

[@The_Entity]

id agree that more player interaction would be fun, but by and large were an aggressive, destructive lot; as shown with what happened with Salome. If Fdev opened up the story in its entirety to the player base, there's only one way it would go. At least this way, the story can end up being more interesting than just destruction and war. that has been done to death.. excuse the pun.

[@assassinaria]

Instead of presenting 'save X or destroy X', they should have stories that revolve around 'destroy X or destroy Y'. The first item to get destroyed is what drives the story forward. Gamers are a competitive lot, and Elite is one of the few unique PvP games where you can influence the world without firing a single shot.

[@YogonKalisto]

@@assassinaria be nice if thargoids had a way of recognizing aggressive cmdrs and judging/tagging them thusly. 3 strikes and you are a thargoid enemy until you pull off a complicated narrative quest to regain peaceful status. always leave an out for players. seems simplish to run ingame tests to gather data, get the all round trend of cmdr behaviour, guiding the metanarrative and still leaving an out for peaceful players and or systems. roll it into the whole "powerplay" mechanic. get factions allying/warring or remaining indifferent with the aliens. the whole "one size fits all" mentality is older than the entire franchize.

[@assassinaria]

@@YogonKalisto That's a good idea. Not just Thargoids, human NPC bounty hunters too

[@Beery1962]

@@assassinaria Why does every choice have to involve destroying stuff?

[@assassinaria]

@@Beery1962 You're right, it could be anything. That was just an example

[@jaywomer2313]

Being unable to play for the foreseeable future and for the pointers before hand as I started to play. I want to say thank you sir for the content you create and pasigying my Elite Dangerous needs. (I be jonesing)

[@l0mad642]

Even through the rough patches, these last few updates have really sparked life back into the game. It may not be exactly what some wanted in the end. Buts a joy to see the community all a buzz for the stargoids, I pray they continue these events. And push Elite to a bright and shining future! Thanks for the content Obsidian.

[@neofett9]

Except for the huge part of the community they just abandoned 😐

[@l0mad642]

@@neofett9 sorry to hear that dude, hopefully you'll be able to join in with the rest eventually. I still think this a good start going forward.

[@cmdrls212]

the dead horse twitched...

[@l0mad642]

Maybe lighten up alittle, life's way to short to be this stressed over video games lmao.

[@vermanshane]

@@l0mad642 Playing since 2015, I'm not stressed over it but I never get excited over Elite anymore, Odyssey was the last straw. Still hopeful it will get better though.

[@troyct8029]

When you put a person in a box with nothing but a button, they will always press the button, So it goes when you put them in a cockpit with nothing but a trigger they are going to shoot.

[@fistsofsnake5475]

but we were put in with living creature not button

[@stofsk]

The Thargoids had specific triggers for turning hostile and were otherwise benign. That said in some signal sources you could see them gobble up occupied escape pods from ships and task forces that had been obviously hit by the Thargoids (obvious corrosive damage on ships for ex.) but we also know - or at least it's hearsay - that there is more than one Thargoid faction. I don't know if the in-game lore has ever really addressed that tho. In any event, there's definitely 'you reap what you sow' going on here with the current state of Thargoid-human relations. If we had as a community decided on a hands-off approach to the Thargoids FDev *probably* would have altered how this narrative proceeded. But on that same point I don't think the players have primarily been responsible for how this narrative has proceeded. I guess you could argue that not enough people chose to oppose Salvation as the obv. grifter/scammer/opportunist/lunatic he was. Perhaps in that regard yes, I think maybe the conclusion to the Azimuth saga would have been different. But overall I think most of what ended up happening would have continued to happen. We still really don't know what we're dealing with re: the Thargoids, how many there are, how widespread their civilisation is, how they organise and respond in large scale to what they perceive as existential threats.

[@CanonnMedia]

It's not just combat. We performed an experiment with AXI and the Hutton Orbital Truckers where we proved that rescue operations alone could remove the incursion state.

[@adriantp_]

my experience as a conscientious objector to the whole thargoid situation is one of watching a significant chunk of the playerbase treating thargoids as a challenge and as a resource, which if i were the thargoids would certainly make me feel attacked. to me it seems like the players did weigh in and they chose exploitation and war, as they always seem to do.

[@paulsweet322]

For me it's been a shame there haven't been more interaction options available for us to use, as stated in the video, the only way to interact with the Barnacles was too shoot them, it still is really. If there could be more options instead of shoot or do nothing that would be something. Who knows what update 14 will bring us, hopefully we'll be pleasantly surprised.

[@Tobascodagama]

I think Ant is correct that the majority of players would have shot first and asked questions later anyway. But having options makes the choice more meaningful, even when the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

[@paulsweet322]

@@Tobascodagama the illusion of choice can always make it feel different even if you're sure of what the direction/outcome is.

[@ImBarryScottCSS]

Exobiology came too late, that could have been the peaceful option.

[@robderich8533]

A hidden Thargoid reputation system seemed like an interesting idea to me, something in the way of reputation droping significantly if you attack them, or increases a little if you let them "sniff" you and they get used to you, or if you feed them meta alloys. They could also make some selected star systems accessible to players who have shown themselves to be peaceful in the eyes of the Thargoids, while aggressive players would be hunted down in such systems. If there were also interesting things to find, collect or mine in these systems, it might even be worth carefully building up relationships with the "natives". Just imagine how awesome it would be being one of the few who might get close to a hive ship because they let you (not to close of course). It might be like a gorilla trusting an explorer that much that he lets him play with his offspring.

[@SusannaSaunders]

@@robderich8533 that would have been cool and I too was hoping for such an option. But I think FDeaf decided that there were too few players that would play this way that they decided to not bother. Pew pew was again the ONLY game in town. That is the really sad thing. The lowest common denominator wins the day. 😢

[@theveryshinyone]

I say we offer f dev senior management as a sacrifice to placate the thargoids. I mean, wouldn’t be missed, right? Or maybe the thargoids would reject them?

[@CMDRStarGoid]

We'd rather have cake if that's ok. We've been told cake is rather tasty.

[@theqmage]

Thanks for the great summary of events! I think it would be great to have player faction which could fight alongsode thargoids...

[@CMDRStarGoid]

OOoooooo....

[@Vallarok117]

I never felt like the Thargoids were hostile, nor did I ever really feel like they were necessarily peaceful I just saw them as being curious. Our only real options to interact with them being through combat was a huge blunder in my opinion; and I feel like the Thargoids were a big missed opportunity to let exploration pilots really thrive.

[@padlnjones]

great history of the Thargoids. I played Elite back in the day on a Commodore 64, just restarted a year ago, so happy to hear the history...

[@billybatson2149]

There are still a few of us oldies who played the original on C64, loved the game then still play now.

[@padlnjones]

@@billybatson2149 The Jameson crash site is one of my favorite places... very dark, but emotive... always a chill... cmdr kwai chang, if we ever meet in the black!

[@billybatson2149]

@@padlnjones Nice to hear from you, I've never visited it but will do so now, as for meeting anyone these days it never seems to happen unless you join a community goal.

[@rarecorgi]

There's a lot of things I would have loved to see if we had a peaceful outcome. Truth be told, I would have loved to been able to pilot a Thargoid ship of any kind, despite lore reasons dictating why we couldn't. Even thoughts of hybrid ships of either Guardians or Thargoids would be interesting.

[@shrambooni3295]

Honestly can't wait for this, gonna be so much fun and it's awesome seeing the community almost being split between those who support the thargoids and those who are against them. Gonna be an insane end to the year.

[@THOMAS-oj8bb]

i despise xeno huggers, axi must prevail

[@thebagfather4633]

great vid . everyone moves to Hutton orbital as the thargoids can't be bothered with the real 90 mins travel time so your safe

[@RichardGroulx]

I remember surviving Thargoid encounters in the original game. Good times. ;)

[@billybatson2149]

You and me, I actually won the T shirt, good times.

[@tomriley5790]

Yep they weren't actually that hard if you had a maxed out ship - there was a keyboard shortcut to force a hyperdiction, you used to be able to scoop the thargons

[@eposnico]

hey man. great videos! thanks for the ongoing content. is the game wort buying at this moment, i`ve been following your content but i`d like to be more informed.

[@pelinoregeryon6593]

I found the Thargoids pretty easy in the original game, once I learned to reverse my joystick keep my finger an the accelerate button and use my rear laser while I looped away from them an a tight curve to prevent them getting a solid targeting lock on me .. used to take a while but wasn't difficult once I got the hang of it 🤗 Used to look forward to them, once you took out the mother-ship and their drones shut down you could gather them up with your cargo scoop, was good money in that 😁 always felt it was a bit of a shame you couldn't use the drones yourself.

[@againsteternity110]

"In most games, the vast majority of players always shoot first, and many don't even ask questions later" lol Thanks for the laugh, mate!

[@Raso719]

If I hadn't lived through the past 3 years myself I would have never thought that people were capable of acting so irrationally and so against their own self interest and survival. I would have chalked the response of the 3 super powers as being more fantastic and unbelievable than the existence of alien life and FTL travel. Now, I'm pretty sure FTL travel is more plausible than humanity acting in it's own best interest IRL.

[@kinkajoo73]

If you define humanity as the ruling (obs)elites then I agree with you. I think it's more to do with the 'choices' we were presented with though 👍

[@austinm5630]

Here's the actual official Elite universe canon: The Thargoids are engaged in a civil war between two Thargoid dynasties, the Klaxians and the Oresrians. After starting to lose this war, the Oresrians dragged the conflict towards the bubble, using humanity as a meat shield to slow down the Klaxian advance. That's established canon. It's from the novels, but it is official lore. It would be nice if more people talking about this would acknowledge this because this drastically changes the conversation. (Especially you, OA. idk why you insist on ignoring this because otherwise your lore videos are outstanding.) So to answer the question, peace was never an option, but an alliance might have been. Making peace with the Thargoids would be like some other country making peace with the United States right in the middle of the civil war - not possible until their own civil war ends. However, an alliance with the Klaxians against the Oresrians or vise-verse was entirely possible. I say was, not is, because I think whatever hope we might've had of that Wycherley utterly destroyed. First with the Mycoid virus and then the Proteus Wave. In an ironic twist, the Proteus wave has not only fractured the unity of humanity, but also likely brought the warring Thargoids together to oppose us. As to FDev's efforts to give the players agency...it has been sadly obvious for quite a while that FDev is telling a certain story, the story they want to tell, and our input in that storytelling process ends where any major plot point begins. We'll have peace with the Thargoids only if that was FDev's plan all along, which I highly doubt because it wouldn't leave us any challenging targets to fight from a gameplay perspective. Though, there again, if FDev remembers their own canon and are willing to do the work, we could still, hypothetically, form an alliance with the Klaxians or Oresrians. We could deploy human troops to fight alongside one clan against the other. That COULD still happen, however unlikely it is that FDev would bother with it. It would certainly make AX CZs more interesting when half the targets are friendly.

[@inquisitorpig5760]

Fighting alongside other Thargoids, now there's an interesting thought. If allied interceptors don't deploy shutdown fields that also 'kill' the ships that are supposed to be fighting for them. I may be giving Frontier too much of a benefit of a doubt here but I have this sneaking suspicion they may bring the Guardian constructs into the mix at some point - after all, they simply disappeared without a trace following their massacre of the Guardians, and could have settled somewhere outside the galaxy, only now drawn back into it by the firing of the Proteus Wave.

[@unbearifiedbear1885]

They should allow pro-Thargoid players to ally with the "threat" - could instigate some really interesting geopolitical scheming within the Elite universe

[@vince7207]

The Thargod cult

[@van3158]

I agree, have NEVER harvested thargoid tech, figured it would lead to something like this.

[@user-yv4up3jz9s]

And then we find out that guardians we had in milky way was just a colony and those who come to the edges of our galaxy can hear like guardian interstellar transmissions. *_and they're getting louder and louder with time_*

[@viewfromafar475]

I always thought that Kenny Everett’s “Captain Elvis Brandenburg Kremmen of the Star Corps” persona, and his trusty sidekick Carla, had bested the evil Thargoid leader Gort, way back in 1976. So …. everything should turn out just fine … again.

[@Nusszucker]

I just hope that the system I currently use as homebase, is not important enough for the Thargoids to attack, or at least that they won't wipe everything from existance, cause I haven't really progressed that much in engineering, I probably could leave the bubble and crawl my way to some of the remote locations, but I would have to leave a lot of my stuff behind. Maybe I prep a ship for rescue missions

[@Goatboy451]

I'm looking forward to when you can play as a Thargoid, flying around in your Thargoid ship, doing Thargoidy things. It'll never happen but I can dream.

[@assassinaria]

I identify as a Thargoid, though...

[@CMDRStarGoid]

@@assassinaria Me too.

[@CMDRStarGoid]

Never say never friend. :)

[@Resetable]

I can't wait to make a new commander, John Thargoid, and hear him say his classic line, "Every Thar has it's goid"

[@baronvonschnellenstein2811]

Nicely put together summary / history of the E:D thargoid narrative to date, @OA :) -> I think large-scale conflict with the thargoids in the E:D narrative was going to be forced in any case - by design. The recent addition of a possible peaceful option is good for player "agency'. - Very limited means of player interaction with the E:D galaxy certainly doesn't help and I don't see this changing much - It's a pity that the "continuity" of this major narrative has been stymied by the need to have a couple of very long pauses, esp. during the "development" of Odyssey. -> It is good that there is possibly going to be a means to pursue peace with thargoids in-game - many players will appreciate having this option - That said, in the Guardians narrative, the Guardians' side of the story _alleges_ the thargoids refused to communicate when the Guardians sued for peace. - Even if the majority of the player-base opts for a "peaceful" end to the current conflict, it would just mean that the thargoid conflict could be dredged up again in the future - I'd prefer to eradicate the thargoids and be done with it -> but then, I was "big" on FE2 (no thargoids) as opposed to 'OG' Elite and FFE, prior to E:D - I found the Guardians narrative _far_ more interesting and engaging -> I just hope that the Guardians don't turn out to be a 'faction' of the thargoids - I'm probably in a tiny minority, but in all the Elite games, I've never had much enthusiasm for the thargoids story, let alone engaging with them (peacefully or via Gunboat Diplomacy). - Don't get me wrong: The models for the thargoid ships and installations are very well done. I'm just not interested in playing out "starship troopers". - IMHO, the "inter-Nicene" machinations and conflicts within the human factions makes for better on-going narrative and gameplay.

[@StAjoraGames]

"It is all a bit of a mess that easily could have been avoided." Kinda sums up all of FDEV's handling of Elite Dangerous doesn't it?

[@ceriousgaming6392]

I've never fired a shot at the thargoids. I've always watched them at a distance before the war started, and I still do now, just with loads of heatsinks to stay somewhat invisible. When ua bombing was a thing, I only ever assaulted stations that bought meta alloys, or offered up missions for them. If the bubble begins to burn, I plan on leaving the bubble for good to go survive amongst the stars. Humanity deserves this fate.

[@nanjanohare5700]

I have never fought the Thargoids either. I have tried to communicate with them: Morse code, mathematical number sequences, atomic masses, PI, ... My idea was that the moment they scanned you and then hovered motionless in front of you, they were waiting for us to "say" something to them. But they did not react. Maybe this will work out after the upcoming update.... ;-) greetings & o7 Nanjan

[@robertpaulsen969]

We definitely should have had more of a choice in the interaction. Even if it was based around community goals like take weapons to one station if you just want to fight them or take sensors and equipment to another if you want to communicate and learn about them. That would have felt more like having a choice. Sadly the only options we had were 1.shoot at weird things 2. harvest/collect weird thing or 3. honk at weird thing. Maybe they were too focused on the FPS aspect of to put more effort on the thargoids which is a shame because I don't think asking for space legs required guns

[@roidroid]

The automatic captions thought this was all about *Elite Thyroids.* Until the very end where it started talking about *Peaceful Thuggo Heads.*

[@Gilder-von-Schattenkreuz]

Its a Normal thing for a Dying Game. When a Game is about to Die. The Devs tend to Run through all the Events and Leftover Content they have to not Waste it. I guess ED is doing that too. They want to get through as much of the Prepared Event Content as Possible before the Game is Shelved and going into Maintenance Mode with the Team moving on to something else.

[@dollopofcrazy5596]

Fontier's story telling ability, or lack there of, takes a back seat to even modern day Disney.

[@FaethorFerenzcy]

Fdev made us all play the game as NPC's (Well Player characters with a very limited impact, NPC seemed fitting even if it is Non Player Character). So the story unfolds cause one of us seems to be the player character, the Hero of the story. But we don't know more yet, and story also just progresses when he does the hidden quests.

[@voidwizard2067]

I enjoy your videos.

[@cmdrreggit]

Sounds kind of weird - but the best time I had in Elite, was hanging out with other Cmdrs around the barnacles - back when they were first discovered. Must have spent hours and hours just waiting...Not much happened...But it was fun!

[@existentialselkath1264]

Players could choose between war and peace. With what few options we had, we could choose between gameplay or doing nothing. It was hardly a real option.

[@fistsofsnake5475]

so what you saying, players are litlle kids who can't think long term and just want candy now?

[@tbone9912]

Referring ro the subject of one of your recent videos, no matter what happens with the Stargoids, there are going to be a LOT of players who react with jaded toxicity because that's how players react to things these days. Haters gonna hate, and there is no shortage of them.

[@JustAGroundhog]

I remember many times trying to approtch a thargoid, and I would try to make friendly gestures like returning ther elost property, patiently allowing them to scan me. I saw there relyctance to attack me as a chance but there was no recorse for this it didnt seem to kead anywhere

[@Jeradactile]

The lynchpin in this seems like communication. Give the players an option to ally with thargoids like federation or empire. Toss in some hybrid ships (I’d take a Goidaconda) I miss this game, but being a console only player I’m watching through OA’s eyes now.

[@armet1272]

I do miss that misty fog effect in Horizons making the whole Planet spooky, I wish they added that in Odyssey cuz exploration without them is flat and not scary...

[@EvoBeard]

Honestly, after Horizons released, the amount of times I'd be gathering materials in my SRV, and before I/we knew about the "places", like driving for hours on a surface until I was sick. The amazing music score, giving an eerie, ominous feeling, thinking that any minute some alien would appear in the vicinity. Would send chills down my spine and I'd have to go back to my ship. 😂

[@leosagan3692]

IMHO, FD should just go back to basics and deliver what was hinted in the lore : 2 Thargoids factions, one 100% evil, one semi-hostile who could be pacified with significant community work.

[@jedsithor]

From a game perspective the Thargoid story may have taken too long but actually, from an in-universe perspective it kinda makes sense that it would take years for them to study humanity, figure out political, social and military structures, not to mention map out how far humanity has spread.

[@danielrafferty4108]

Agreed. It's a love hate relationship with Elite. I always bought into the length of time for things, especially this story but it also means that the game loops I can engage in while waiting for things to progress quickly become stale. As an explorer/scientist mainly (well explorer in game play terms as a player and scientist as a commander in game as limited as that moniker may be) I was thrilled and fascinated the first time I was Hyperdicted. It was like Close Encounters of Third Kind and I was Richard Dreyfuss making Barnacles out of mashed potato and hoping we didn't fuck things up with our cosmic neighbours. Always went for the sights and encounters and never brought guardian tech to mess up their bases. Unfortunately from there I've just been aggressively shot to pieces in the void by the thargoids and quietly cursing those trigger happy cockpit jockeys for shooting first and asking questions later. But as things go, given the video and comments here it seems even if it was built on choices from player interactions what metric are the using. Is it measurable when a player ill equipped to do nothing but be shot down or who chose to because they refuse to be violent. Given that most times I see community goals around this it can broken down to "Shoot the Thargoids" I don't think it was very well implemented for player choice in the first place. The recent community goal for building a megaship to communicate with the thargoids gives me hope, but it's probably too little too late and there to give us peace lovers an illusion of a choice. Sorry for the digression, but I do agree with you. In world the time makes sense but I do think the developers use this as a crutch for very slow development on new and current game mechanics as well as story and lore.

[@tbaymufon6448]

I played elite tonight for the first time this year. Missed the game so much. Just didn’t realize it till tonight.

[@mrman5517]

10 years for a story to unfold? still faster than GRRM! :D

[@mprojekt72]

As a species, we don't play well with others, even among ourselves.

[@MajorJakas]

As a species, we've managed to get along just fine. It's when the occasional person comes along searching for individual power, that things get tense.

[@TheDontletmedie]

I miss the old planet texture. I have no idea how or why they changed the way planets look --they honestly look like plastic now. I don't even have a desire to play this game due to a lot of changes, but a big part is the way they changed how planets look.

[@viridian-]

I dunno what's going to happen, but I feel that a dedicated and coordinated attack by the Thargoids would be impossible to stop unless they bring the mycoid back and hand it out to us in the form or premium ammo.

[@awesomenessgaming8661]

A well known fact about the Thargoids, is that they are exceptional bioengineers. So much so, it is believed they developed an immunity to the Mycoid Virus. Same trick won't work twice.

[@Rigel_Chiokis]

It came to this for one simple reason: when commanders were given the choice to suppost Salavation's efforts or not, they chose to support him wholeheartedly in order to get some shiny new bling. The greedy collectors of gadgets for their ships are what brought this upon humanity.

[@nanjanohare5700]

Hello ObsidianAnt, thanks for than great video, i wanted to make one like this with the same content, but you are faster 🙂 I don't belive, Thargoids leave the game, Elite Dangerous without Thargoids is not Elite Dangerous anymore... But.. There are two kinds of Thargoids, some are agressive, some are curios... The aggressive Thargoids can still be fought in the future, like pirates. You can trade with the peaceful Thargoids or do missions for them, just as you did with the humans. Maybe you can even do that with the Thargoid bases, like currently in the Odyssey settlements. Maybe you can even hire them as crew and fly with them. The annomalies are mostly green, which reminds me a lot of Thargoids, that's their colour. But there is also a blue component in the annomalies. That reminds me more of the Guardians. Maybe there's a common ancestor of both races coming towards us to check out what's happening here. Or maybe it's a protection force of a joint government of Guardians and Thargoids (something like UN soldiers) ? Maybe we will get to know the Guardians :-) In many other space games there are many aliens, why not here? There are still many closed systems and sectors... Maybe there are more races to discover there... Maybe, maybe, let's see if the dream of a peaceful galaxy comes true.... Greetings & o7 Nanjan Ohare Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[@richvandervecken3954]

I have no interest in combat with the thargoids. If the bubble gets to combative I will just head out on a deep exploration journey!

[@nucleardrifting3864]

As someone who stopped playing around the time when the thargoids where still super rare. This game has changed so much when it comes to them.

[@CmdrTigerKing]

no the game hasnt changed really at all.. I promise... nothing

[@Sinisphere]

I'd definitely argue that if ship modules were provided years back that allowed players to research / communicate with Thargoids even on the most extremely basic level, a lot of people would have tried peaceful tactics. As is, guns were provided for players, guns were used. People shot fist, asked questions never because they were handed a gun.

[@andgame4857]

10:45 It shouldn't be a surprise for a game in which shooting was the only type of interaction possible for quite some time.

[@2DRonaldo]

They re-appeared in the Expansion for Frontier 2: Close Encounters. Don't think you mentioned that part.

[@KhaziirEverflight]

My headcanon for my character is, that he originally was a follower of the peace movement tryig to be diplomatic with the thargoids, but how that there is war because of the overall human choices, he has accepted the defeat of what he believed was possible, and accepts that if he wants to ensure existance for the human race, or try to at least, being able to defend himself and help in the war is inevetable.

[@MattVarnish1103]

Here is my guess: Thargoids will blow up / blockade earth, simply to make it so ED don;t have to ever generate detailed surfaces for Earth, Mars and the Moon :) I mean, we all asked for space legs, they spent yours giving us space legs and then we were disappointed ( I actually like Odyssey)

[@cmdrjesterdajuggla]

I fully think we should have been given more options to interact with them if their gonna force combat on us especially if it's close to the bubble where people usually start

[@Grayson_Phoenix]

This may be my FAV vid you've made on the Thargoids, and I agree -- No matter the CHOICE available to humans, the majority tend to be __"trigger-happy"__ (kids!! .. or idiots..), and think nothing of consequence etc.. ("Because it's 'just a game'.." -- and it IS, but is still written with consequences.) INVARIABLY / unavoidably, we would still be here today, with APPARENT (misinterpreted!) Thargoid "hostility". No consideration is made for the historic (no longer canon?) concept of 2 main branches of Thargoid where one branch was more aggressive than the other (2nd being Oresrians?) . . . and our first interactions witnessed -- the first Interdictions/HYPERdictions -- NEVER resulted in attack against the human ships, no matter how many ships were pulled. Were those interdictions by the "pacifist" branch of Thargoids? Ignoring this fact, it's the trigger-happy who chose to consider the interdictions a form of "attack", demanding the ability to wage war against an alien race we yet know little about... The war-mongering among humanity have kicked the proverbial hornet's nest; and that's why human stations were attacked, and that's where we are today. Look, Han Solo shot first; he was sitting opposite just another example of bounty hunter scum of the galaxy -- in that context, it was eat or be eaten; kill or be killed. Han survived. But Greedo WAS pointing a blaster at him AND using hostile language. Hyperdictions meant a Thargoid "disabling", then "scanning" a human ship, but then LEAVING it, withOUT ever attacking it. In Fishing terms, it's "catch-and-release". The Fish LIVES ON. The fisherman is not "attacking" the fish (despite the fishhook hole). Human ships were rendered disabled, not damaged, and certainly not destroyed. Not until AFTER humans "shot first" did Thargoids eventually move to "attack humans". Hey, (humans,) YOU ASKED FOR IT. >_< IF there's any chance to make fresh attempts at communication to advocate for peace, we MUST try . . . before it's too late. PS - we MUST try (again?) to DECIPHER the TWO LINES of encoded symbols visible during a Thargoid scan. I've said for YEARS ... there's a clue in there somewhere... there's something we ought to be seeing / using.

[@BRBMrSoul]

Youre ignoring fact, hyperdictions are not always passive.

[@keziickfirelight7822]

I don't think FDev have the balls to exact an appropriate response from the thargoids towards the humans. I consider the thargoids to be a curiosity at best and a nuisance at worst at this point. Only until human worlds and stations start getting permanently destroyed will I actually take them seriously.

[@craighutchison5258]

The last time I played ED was about 5.5 years ago ish when the Thargoids just arrived.

[@adriandinsmore5630]

I always wondered if the Thargoids had anything to do with 2000AD's Tharg the Mighty from Fleetway Comics.

[@sierraharvester]

As someone who has only been in the game for 4 years, all this discovery had already happened, and the only interaction has been to shoot them. It was two years before someone even mentioned past options of peace, and then new Thargoid killing weapons started showing up. Violence is all I’ve known.

[@l1qu1dm3t4lIV]

The conflict is probably all Humanity's fault, but if there's one thing we are good at; it's war. We've been working on it since before we had word for it.

[@grumpy_gnome813]

Thargoid faction tier 3 ability to purchase blueprint which can be exchanged with materials for a thargoid ship would be tempting

[@Doll_Li]

Players do ask question after shooting.. that question being: "Is it dead yet?"

[@jimmydesouza4375]

Also regarding the thargoid narrative. Interdiction IS aggressive by nature. Without any kind of counterbalance that means that the thargoids are aggressive on the whole and so drew any hostility on to themselves. If frontier wanted to push this "you choose between war and peace" narrative they had to give an avenue to peace which they didn't.

[@solidxangryjoer4233]

Have piece with one part of the Thargoids and war with a different branch, something like that. It is a game, people like shooting, Thargoids are different then human right, so it just makes sense that a game is used to to have fun in combat. I don't think most player just want to play a Space Truck Simulator so yea.

[@SkYsLiDeR9000]

If I play ED at all, it's as Space Truck Simulator! Lol!

[@foxxnight5114]

The thing that gets me is most cmdrs probably saw the fancy stuff salvation was giving out as rewards and didn't even for a second think about the ramifications of they're choices. Like the witch hunt crew choosing to fight against salvation like 2 community goals from the end. no one in the witch hunt saw that salvation was super sus after corsar till the story was practically over with?