Of all the games in all the galaxy, we want to know what it is that draws you to Elite and why you keep coming back for more. There are two ways to enter this reward:
For a $1 prize, simply tell us why you play Elite in one or two sentences of text.
For a $5 prize, create a video or write at least 200 words of text answering the same question in more detail.
Thank you to OrangePheonix for the reward idea! Here's their description:
"Why Elite Dangerous? For many in the Elite Dangerous community, the game is held dear and is that one game you never stop playing or always come back to. It's been referred to by myself and others as a comfy robe and slippers, a safe place to find comfort or that itch that can't be scratched by any other game.
"But why? Is it because of its second-to-none community? Is it because of the sheer vastness of the galaxy you can explore? Is it because it's a true sandbox game in which the journey is yours to choose with no handholding? So I ask: why Elite Dangerous?"
for me Elite Dangerous, represents something special, I love space games, and I like this not only for the vastness of the map, that is, the game represents the entire milky way, but also for various activities that a player can do, for example you can go around exploring the various systems and sell cartographic data to the various stations present in the bubble, you can land on some planets and explore them with a rover or on foot if you have the Odyssey expansion. other activities that can be done are Miner, the bounty Hunter, the merchant and the taxi driver in addition to Exobiology and espionage missions. furthermore the game allows you to share a persistent galaxy between all the modes for example it is possible to play in solo mode (without being able to meet other players) and have the galaxy shared between Open and Private players, and it is possible if you have Odyssey to land together with friends on the planets and explore them together obviously the Landable ones as long as they also have the expansion, it is possible to create Squadrons and much more.
A very interesting thing is the vast number of ships that you can have each with its own characteristics and design obviously the ships are customizable both in modules and aesthetics such as skins and objects for the cockpit.
Elite Dangerous is also a game that is always evolving, between wars with aliens and battles between factions and much more, apart from the difficulty at the beginning, but once the game takes you, you can't stop playing it, I've been playing it for several months and I must say that it has never bored me both for the fact that the map is immense over 400 billion systems and for the vastness of things to unlock such as bonuses if you are allied to a powerplay, I also like the fact that you can change powerplay at any time but losing the progress made with the one you had joined, in short, so much stuff. the game as already mentioned is constantly evolving and then on a graphic level the game does not weigh much.
The main things that drive me to play Elite are
huge maps
various game activities
graphically light and not too heavy
ability to walk down to landable planets and explore them alone or with friends
What originally drew me to Elite: Dangerous was simply the promise of a modern reworking of the original 1984 Elite (a game I adored and played obsessively on the BBC Micro back in 1984). What has kept me playing is the fact that Elite: Dangerous has more than lived up to that promise.
Two major factors are that it provides an accurate 1:1 simulation of our actual galaxy and a superbly well thought out flight model. The second in particular bears closer scrutiny.
At the galactic level we have a fantastic interactive map and route plotting facility with well thought out trade offs around weight, jump range and fuel which all go to make galactic travel something we have to actively participate in, both when building ships and when navigating vast interstellar distances.
At the intra-system level we have supercruise travel. The way this supports real time travel across a mind boggling range of scales (from hundreds of thousands of light seconds down to hundreds of kilometers) through a web of gravitational fields which mean that racing towards in-system destinations is something I've spent ten years mastering, that is a work of unsung genius!
And lastly, we have real space travel using a brilliantly implemented flight model that lends real weight and character to every single ship and, through the use of flight assist, provides both atmospheric and Newtonian styles of behaviour and control to suit all but the most demanding of tastes.
Combine all this with what is widely acknowledged to be some of the best sound design out there and you have a space flight simulation that's still unrivaled ten years after it was first created.
When I was a kid, many of my fantasies about being a space pilot were fulfilled with some space games (hello Codename MAT) that I had on my Amstrad CPC. But even back then, I imagined how interesting and fun it would be to play in a big universe, without barriers, without obligations, where I could do, as a player, whatever I wanted, and not just shoot at enemy ships of another race. While that idea of gameplay was later realised by open-world sandbox games, at the time it seemed impossible to realise... until I discovered Elite. I think, for those who didn't experience it, it can be hard to understand what that masterpiece meant to many.
Subsequently, both Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters further satisfied my longing for a space game set in an open world with no limits, but I think it's easy to understand what Elite Dangerous meant to that child, now an adult, but still with that same desire.
Being a bounty hunter, a pirate, or fighting for your power, is tremendously appealing. The fights in ED are challenging and fun, and configuring ships and engineering them to find setups that suit your needs is a rewarding challenge every time you do it. I certainly won't be the one to say otherwise.
But I'm the kind of player who really enjoys getting lost in the black for weeks at a time, visiting systems you know no other player has visited yet (and probably won't), mining asteroids in the middle of the milky way, or taking endless quiet routes as a galactic trucker between thousands of bubble stations.
The possibility of having such a huge universe, with so many places to visit, so much trade to do, so many socio-economic and political changes, with those rare commodities that can only be obtained in a hundred systems, with the generational ships and tourist beacons, the secrets of alien races, the infinite random events, the notable stellar phenomenas, the planetary surfaces and their exobiology, all this, makes ED that game that any sci-fi lover, who dreams of losing himself in his favourite entertainment, must forcibly adore.
And, as contradictory as it may sound, for me it is key to be able to experience all that gameplay without having the ‘obligation’ of sharing each session, and therefore being playably dependent on other human players. Although I know for a fact that it is a complex and controversial topic, personally, the option of being able to carry out game sessions in ‘Solo’ is the perfect icing on the immense cake that is this impressive game, which although some mistakenly think that it is now 10 years old, for many it is really a dream that came true 40 longs years ago.
I was inspired by the stories about the Fuel Rats, especially the story when they delivered fuel to a pilot at the end of the galaxy who miscalculated the amount of fuel for the return trip, and also the stories about the Distant Worlds expedition. Personally, I love the freedom this game gives, I am an explorer myself and the sight of large clusters of plants on planets still makes me happy, even though there are often not that many of them, especially not as many as Frontier promised years ago, but looking at the last year it may change. . Of course, apart from the great views, I really like the quality of sound and music this game offers, using the boost on some ships is very satisfying. Colonization is also taking place and I can't wait until I can build the system with my squadron the way we want. I also really hope that they will allow us to build cities next to cities on planets to have such a large metropolis. I also love that you can build your ship however you want, you can have a balanced ship, but you can also build an Anaconda for fun to fly into other ships and destroy them. Playing alone doesn't have to be boring, but it must be admitted that bounty hunting in a group of four is a very cool and profitable activity, or that feeling when you, together with others, destroyed Hydra after 30 minutes. These are the main factors why I LOVE Elite and look forward to the next Frontier Unlocked.
Everybody needs a game to just kind of, as I put it, 'zen out' to. For a lot of folks, that ends up being some kind of stereotypical cozy game, often a farming sim like Stardew Valley or a life sim like Animal Crossing. The specific game doesn't matter, just the mental state it gets you into where you're relaxed and able to focus on your tasks without any external pressure or time constraints beyond what you place on yourself. I bounce around a lot of games to fill that niche, including the afforementioned Stardew Valley as well as Satisfactory and No Man's Sky, but one that I found myself coming back to over and over is Elite Dangerous.
Which might seem like an odd choice, since Elite is a game that's pretty action-oriented, you fight pirates & other players, dodge system authorities to smuggle goods, and take a stand on the galactic stage for the super power you're willing to pledge yourself to. But Elite is a game that prides itself on having a variety of ways to interact with its world and forge your own story, as evidenced by this image I pulled from Reddit when I was trying (semi-successfully) to convince my friends to join me in the game:
My chosen way of enjoying Elite is via trade. I build up a high-cargo, long-range freighter, plan out and optimize my route, throw on some Deep Purple and go Space Truckin'. And the kind of flow state my mind gets into when I do is exactly what I"m looking for whenever I jump into the cockpit.
Elite Dangerous is like stepping into the sci-fi dream I’ve had since I was a kid. The second I sit in my cockpit, fire up those engines, and hear that deep, satisfying hum, it’s like I’m actually there. The galaxy is massive—like, mind-blowingly huge—and it makes you feel so small, but in the best possible way.
I love the freedom it gives me. One day, I’m hauling rare goods across star systems, carefully plotting my routes to avoid pirates. The next, I’m out in the black, scanning undiscovered systems, naming planets, and soaking in those breathtaking views of nebulae and distant stars. And then, when I’m feeling a little wild, I’ll gear up my ship, turn off flight assist, and dive into the chaos of a dogfight, pulling off maneuvers that make me feel like the hero of my own space opera.
There’s just something so satisfying about mastering the controls, learning the systems, and realizing that this massive galaxy is yours to explore however you want. Every session feels like a personal adventure, and honestly? I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it
Well I started on the launch of the Xbox version not knowing anything finding the starting information by myself, then finding the bubble screen and realizing that the game was in the infancy and thinking to myself this is boring I will need to wait couple years before it gets interesting. Finally got into coast to coast am and picked up the audio book “battlefield earth” and thinking of elite dangerous being inspired to play it again. As my journey parallels the book “And Here the Wheel” not knowingly I had joined a federation group I found. Knowing that starting my own would be massive task I decided to just help a leader out. The group was highly racist and exploited players, I trudged along getting drunk one night and wanting to hang out with them. The combined decided to make an example out of me and flaunted booting me. I broke out in rage over Xbox live chat telling them various things and they all shut up, to be fly on the wall…I vowed to start my own, not knowing about player created factions. I succeeded in making my real earth history player factions and reading the elite dangerous books to find out that “and here the wheel” predicted my factions and the events in the game being shocked! Also as young boy playing “Colony Wars”
Sci-Fi content is something unique in current times. Sometimes I just feel bad that we cannot go into space like we go outside every day to the shop but that's when space simulators come into place.
Elite Dangerous is one of those unique games where we can see pretty reasonable development of advanced technology (if Frame Shift Drive even counts as a possible to research technology). We don't have too much fantasy stuff here and deep lore really adds more depth into this whole universe.
Every aspect of the game, from simple bounty hunting through exploration, politics, asteroid mining and many other things makes Elite feel very realistic, where ships have hard-set limits and aren't simple powerful destruction tools.
Many people find this kind of realism kinda boring, I have some friends that have that feeling but this is exactly what attracts me to this game. It's a great sandbox where you can affect develop of the humanity with trade, missions and participating in wars/elections/community goals and in the nearby future, also by colonizing whole new systems by yourself or with your squadron.
So I think that's why I really like this game. It's not over complicated when you learn the basic activities and mechanics, and the fact that, even with this realism, nothing here forces you to play any specific role makes you feel really free in this almost infinity amount of space to travel. And I can enjoy the sci-fi I would like to encounter in my life and which I can only dream about.
I have always been curious about space and everything up there. When I first discovered this game, I was struck by the fact that it has the galaxy in 1:1 scale. When I first started playing Elite Dangerous, I found it to be a fascinating game, but at the same time very complicated because of the mechanics it had. That led me to stop playing the game and uninstall it. Then, when the Odyssey DLC came out, it caught my attention and I reinstalled it and gave it a second chance. I started watching tutorials on YouTube to learn the game mechanics. Once I started learning the game mechanics, I realized that this game is so beautiful that I have spent over 1800 hours playing it. I have even traveled the galaxy from end to end.
The feeling of freedom it offers is unmatched. There is no fixed path. I can choose to be a peaceful trader, a lone explorer, a bounty hunter, or even a pirate feared by all. That freedom of choice is what makes every session unique and personal.
From the most intense space combat to the silent exploration of remote nebulas, every moment is a new adventure.
Plus, the developers continually add content and improvements, meaning there's always something new to discover and do.
Another thing I really like about this game is its community. The Elite Dangerous community is one of the most passionate and supportive I've ever met. In the Spanish-speaking community I'm in, many of the players are older, married, and have children. That makes the community characterized by respect and solidarity. There's always someone willing to help you, share advice, or just enjoy the company while you explore space.
I definitely found Elite Dangerous to be a unique game that I can enjoy with a community that shares the same passion for space.
