For well over a year, Elite Dangerous players have been waging a war on the Thargoids, the universe’s dangerous alien species. Recently, in a chat with GamesRadar, lead game designer Betterton gave something of a rallying cry about the current and future state of the war.
The existence of the Thargoids in Elite Dangerous was contentious until a player made contact in 2017, which MMORPG.com got to talk with devs about at the time. In November 3308 (which is 2022), the official in-game Galnet news network reported the approach of Taranis Titan ships carrying a barrage of ships, followed by the unleashing later that month, marking the start of the Thargoids’ wave of destruction. At least one has been taken down, but there’s a long way to go, it seems.
As Betteron tells it, always have a shot at the upper hand (by better-footed warfare)—they just need to figure out how to do it, together. But at least he’s optimistic.
“[I]t's not like they've always been on the back foot,” he says. “Depending on how the players coordinate we really don't know how long it might be before there is a true end to the Thargoid War.”
He confirms with GamesRadar that the obscure nature of many of the tools at their disposal is intentional. However, when they want to loop everyone in, they do have to be a little more straightforward. The way it’s discussed, it seems to specifically be the case for the upcoming wave of battle against the Thargoids with new updates, especially as preparations are made to take on Titans:
[…] Frontier says that with players having spent 18 months discussing tactics in Discord servers and Reddit comments, it wants to make sure that everyone else can get involved, no matter how and where they choose to engage with the game. "This is a monumental part of Elite's history, and we'd like everyone to get a chance to be part of it." - Lead Game Designer Elite Dangerous
In the meantime, Betterton and the Elite Dangerous team has enjoyed watching players come together on social media, forums, and chatrooms in order to figure out the pieces of the lore puzzles that need to come together. How long it’ll take to actually shove off the Thargoid threat—or at least bring it to a standstill—will be up to the players.
In the meantime, Frontier has again teased the revamped Power Play faction system, which rewards players for loyalty to certain NPC factions.
