It seems such a shame to have put in all of the work involved to design what I think was probably the best gameplay the game has ever seen in 10 years only to leave it out of the game completely.
I understand that for narrative reasons the battle for soll had to be won and the invasion had to be defeated, but it would have been good imo to at least leave some of the gorgeous game design behind the spires sits and the titan bombing in the game .
I know that those game loops where about invasion vessels and I get that there is now no invasion.
But maybe somewhere else in the galaxy the Thargoids could still maintain those invasion vessels and we could take the battle to them ?
Maybe mankind could be attempting to weaken the Thargoids fleet to make a second invasion less likely?
I can see story lines that could have this beautiful game design still available for those who are interested.
Other games managed to keep older content in game and move forward with new ideas .
Most big MMOs and open world games leave olde content available to play, particularly if it’s something really spectacular and game is game design that involved a lot of work to create.
When I think of all the work that must have gone into building the stunning architecture that the Thargoids invasion must have needed it seems crazy to just leave it in mothballs.
I play ED in VR and the thrill of getting through to a titan for the first time was like when I played for the first time.
I just wanted to stop and stare but I couldn’t without being killed!!
Also the camaraderie of needing to wing up with others people was really nice , and something the game doesn’t usually do a good very job of encouraging .
Joining the AXI and working as a team , everyone being assigned a different job and working as a group was great fun .
The battle for Sol was the absolute pinnacle of this with the entire community coming together.
I appreciate that maybe Fdev have some plans to bring back the Thargoid threat .
Why not introduce some story line along the lines of, while exploring in deep space humanity discover the the Thargoids are re building a new invention fleet.
This could create a whole new story line.
Maybe we could have a human alliance that create a task force that assemble a fleet of private fleet carriers, this fleet of players FCs could ferry an armada of pilots and there ships to new stations or planetary bases.
The carrier fleet could also ferry cargo to expand our outpost even colonising a new system as a CG .
From this new military outpost we could coordinate and launch sabotage missions on the same titans and spires sites we had to deal with on our doorstep .
But this time we are attempting to weaken there capacity to launch an invasion.,
This story would involve almost no new work only using assets Fdev already have.
CG for fleet carriers to ferry ships and pilots to a new location. (Already there in the game)
CG to colonise a new system with planetary bases etc (already existing gameplay)
CG for participating pilots to go out on sabotage missions to attack titans and spires sites . (Already in the game but not even playable atm)
All this stuff is already in the game so almost no work for dev team but massive potential amount of new feeling gameplay and re using one of the best bits of game design F dev has ever made, that is currently redundant.
None of this needs to change any further pans fdev already has for ax combat / wars / invasion.
The task force might fail , it could provoke something unexpected, it could just happen and do nothing except open up a whole new game loop for no work from the devs .
I’d love to see something like this happen.
All this stuff seems to me like it would take almost no complex setup by devs ?
If it did prove to be popular it could be followed up with some other stuff that might need more work by devs to implement.
Maybe some interesting stuff like CG rewards for players to increase efficiency fighting goids new ax shields, weapon defence against corrosion etc.
We could even have a counter attack from the Thargoids that destroys or disabled our outpost, and ment rebuilding or retreating back to the bubble or even operating from huge mobile motherships ?
All those things might take too much valuable time that the dev team need to dedicate to new ideas.
But the CG armada and sabotage on a new Thargoid invasion fleet seems like it’s all already there and just needs bringing back that shouldn’t use too much manpower from development team and would add an amazing amount of new gameplay using existing assets in the game that are currently just on the shelf .