this game excels at immersion and detail for being a sci-fi flight sim, and I feel like just calling it a flight sim is disingenuous to what it brings to the table, which is way more than just having difficult controls and realistic physics for flying. there are many career paths that you can partake in - exploration, bounty hunting, mining, trade, civilian transport, piracy and crime (there'll be an overhaul of that system in the next update). many ships to buy and outfit, squadrons to join, on-foot operations and planetary outposts to plunder. during all of the above, you can be pledged to a galactic Power and reap additional rewards, and when you rank up with your chosen Power you get exclusive rewards and modules to outfit your ship with.
however, the game is far from perfect, and for this next point, you'll find the same answer from me or from a player with thousands of hours on the game: there isn't much to do with the credits you get, you can buy more ships and upgrade them, but upgrading your ships with credits is merely just the tip of the iceberg in the journey of making a ship truly deadly or efficient. this brings me to the material/ship engineer grind in elite, and whether it's excessive or not is a matter of opinion, I think it's balanced in terms of difficulty. however, it would be a lot more natural to make materials more of a prominent gameplay reward for just playing the game than having to go to certain points of interest in space or planetside where you farm the mats then relog and do it all over again, it's not hard, just tedious... it's a complete mystery how there isn't an easier way to get material elements off of the periodic table in the 34th century..
another good place FDev can focus on is exploration, all the foundation for exploration is in the game, it's just that 100% of all landable planets look the same, which is miserably rocky and desolate. larger planetary outposts/settlements/towns could also be a good addition to the game.
something that still needs FDev's desperate attention is more co-op functionality and making teamwork a more viable option rather than doing the whole game solo, a lot of the grind is a solo endeavor, multicrew is merely a suggestion, there's no real reason to socialize in elite dangerous, you can play the whole game from start to "finish" by yourself.. with more co-op and teamwork viability, more natural engineer grind, cooler exploration (probably less boring looking black holes too) the game will see more attraction from the mainstream folk and hopefully put Elite on the radar like it truly deserves to be.
oh and FDev please make some ship customizations like ship colors for credits!! RAAAAH, I don't wanna be stuck with a toothpaste colored Corsair forever. anyways, thank you for a pretty peak game
