Why the Future Of Elite Dangerous Is BIGGER Than You Think

2025 has been an incredibly good year for elite dangerous already but things are about to get a whole lot bigger and in fact much larger than you might think not just in terms of content releases but really in a fundamental way the game is becoming no longer just a shared world spim is involving into something far more ambitious but Trailblazers and the next update Vanguard not just mere updates what they're aiming to do is reshape Elite into a much larger and more dynamic game for the past 10 years or so Elite has always been a

game about being a background actor and David ban and froner have said as much as players are in an NPC driven Universe all of that is about to end instead Elite is now shifting toward a future where player actions have a permanent and far reaching consequence on the entire galaxy and the latest update to the game Tri Blazers released on the 26th of February to High Praise and has already been very successful now if we head on over to steam charts we can see there's been a massive jump in player numbers over the past few

months we're now reaching some of the highs in terms of player numbers that we saw in Elite many years ago so Frontier working very hard here and rebuilding the player base now last week that wasn't the only thing that happened there was also massive announcements on the future content for elite that included a road map as well as a few details of the next update which is called vanguards so today I'm going to talk a bit about why I think the future for elite is very bright why it might well be a bigger event than

many people had been exped let's start with that road map it's broken down into five phases we've already had phase one in fact that's going on right now the release of TR Blazers next up phase two is the race of a ship Corsair then the big one this is the summer update phase three it is vanguards following on from that is another ship release in Phase 4 and then in the winter there is a new feature this will be a big update for the game hopefully along the lines of either Trailblazers or vanguards but as

yet it is entirely unnamed now what makes this a particularly big deal is that Frontier detail in that there are three big updates to be releasing uh this year now to be fair here I guess it should be poting out that Trailblazers was originally meant to be released at the end of last year so uh technically I guess you could argue if you're splitting hairs that we were getting two Updates this year but but the actual reality is yes there are three updates so that makes it a very big year for the game indeed what's

more they're not just adding little bits of content here and there but it seems they're working on a coordinated P plan to really expand what Elite dangerous is all about and let's break that down for a bit with Trailblazers we got colonization now this is a feature that a lot of people have been asking for for a very long time that is the ability to expand the bubble put space stations and civiliz ation economies and War zones all the rest of it into new systems that are currently empty and this will continue over time as

the bubble continues to expand but not only that this has been combined with somewhat of a new foundational feature at least in my opinion which is Base building so that makes this update very important because it puts the expansion of the bubble to this whole colonization system directly into the players hands players become what's known as a system architect and that means you get to direct and dictate where space stations are situated what type of space stations are put down that you can situate and locate planetary outposts and then also determine what type of economy

that star system is going to run the bottom line here is that as a player you get to really put your mark on the Galaxy and directly influence how the overall game changes and expands over time it's also worth mentioning that you're not limited to just one star system here once you've got a initial star system all set up and complete you can move on and design a second star system a third star system and so on and so forth It's just that you can only really have one initial setup going on at a time

the broader picture here then is that what this means is players have a direct and permanent impact on the Galaxy this isn't just about going out and collecting a mission or collecting various different resources it's not about upgrading your ship or even doing a community gold all of those things are transitional once said done and you log out they don't really have a permanent impact on the Galaxy sure you could make a point that perhaps Community goals to that do to an extent at least some of them but by and large not really and you're

not doing these as a singular player at any rate but what Trailblazers has fundamentally changed here is that as a lone single individual player you can make a permanent indelible Mark upon the Galaxy itself something that that will affect all other players that other players can interact with and that really is a dramatic shift and a massive change for the game it seems though that this isn't just an isolated update instead Frontier are expanding things even further this is going to happen with the summer update vanguards which is as Frontier themselves say is a spiritual

successor to squadrons in other words the bottom line seems to be that Frontier are introducing the whole concepts of guilds here guilds that you'll find in other online games now of course course as it stands right now you can form a squadron in Elite dangerous you can basically create a huge group of players but this has limited effects and limited capabilities Frontier are dramatically improving this whole concept I run through a very quick list of bullet points here essentially what we've got is improved communication so this will be designed to enhance communication and both social

gaming as well within the game and there's also going to be a group coordination so this will provide provide a dedicated UI for Vanguard members to communicate and set objectives as well as coordinate activities it seems in by and large in a way you kind of a to create missions and whil these may not be official missions in the traditional sense that we have in the game you can nonetheless set specific objectives that you want your Vanguard members to uh participate in now it seems pretty obvious to me that these will be able to plug

in directly to other areas of the game whether that's the background simulation power play that's power play 2.0 or indeed the colonization efforts all mean that from directly within the game players will be able to coordinate on mass whether that's just at three or four or five players or perhaps even hundreds of players you're be to focus all of your attention to achieving a particular goal and these goals will be set by the Vanguard leader now beyond that there will also be the ability to set perks which are provided as a kind of reward for

players achieving this Collective achievement taking things a step further is going to be a banking system here players or the Vanguard system itself the Vanguard group will be a to collectively deposit various different things within the uh Vanguard bank and this can be at credits it can be modules it can even be ships and players then will be able to withdraw from this or perhaps the leadership we about to issue withdrawals to various different members I'm not quite sure the details on how that would will work yet fun to haven't discussed the specifics but it

seems a pretty obvious that yes this is going to be a full-on guild system basically you'll be able to join up participate in joint activities and also have Collective resources that can be shared with the group now if you kind of step back and think about this in many respects this is also becoming another permanent feature of the game as with colonization where you set up various space stations and ground bases all the rest of it and these have a permanent impact on the game that other players can see what we doing with these Vanguard

systems these effectively organizations these would also be permanent in many respects as a a Vanguard leader you could perhaps set up a Vanguard a group a a guild an organization whatever you want to call it and when you log out that organization is still going to persist and any objective you've set will be there for other players to participate in this at its heart at its very center the foundational idea of this is player generated content isn't it this is dynamic content that the players themselves are creating and being involved with and that is going

kind of hand inand with colonization which is very similar from that point of view so let's take a look at all these things together and taken together I do believe they paint quite a vivid picture of the direction Frontier heading in with Elite dangerous now to be perfectly clear here everything I say next is entirely my opinion this is speculation this isn't an official statement not by any means from Frontier it's basically my thoughts on what we've seen so far just so I'm just uh piecing the pieces together placing the puzzle together as it were

quite clearly they're not just adding different elements or extra content to Elite instead what they appear to be doing is expanding the overall concept of elite dangerous as an MMO what do I mean by that it might seem a bit of a strange statement well well Elite dangerous has always had connect ity a massive Galaxy and player interactions has never functioned like a true MMO in the way that games like her even online or World of Warcraft 2 instead Elite has primarily been a shared World spacium a game where players exist in the same universe

but mostly operate independently without deeply structured social and economic systems driving the overall experience now some players might argue that Elite has always been an MMO because of systems like the background simulation and power play whil those elements create persistence they don't actually function like traditional MMO mechanics in reality they have always been NPC driven systems where players contribute but never fully control the outcomes what we're seeing here now with Vanguard and Trailblazers is a major shift it's a shift that is going to dramatically change the overall nature of the game it's going to be

one where players are finally stepping into the driver's seat and shaping the game World in a way that was never before possible what this means is there is a significant shift going on here for the first time Elite dangerous is moving beyond simply allowing players to influence the Galaxy it's now given them the ability to directly shape and expand it previously mechanics like the background simulation the bgs and power play provided ways for plowers players to push the game's economy and politics in different direction s But ultimately these systems were NPC driven any progress was

a reflection of accumulated player actions rather than true player ownership or governance now with Trailblazers and Vanguard we're seeing something fundamentally different players are no longer just influencing the universe which is controlled by NPCs instead they are actively creating and leading within it so Trailblazers the colonization it makes colonization a player driven process this allows players to establish new settlements dictate economies and leave permanent marks on the Galaxy something that was previously only possible through developer intervention meanwhile Vanguard is going to introduce a fully structured persistent social system and this resembles the guilds and corporations

found in traditional MMOs so with shared objectives leadership structures and resource pooling Vanguard gives players the tools to to coordinate on a scal that was never before possible in Elite taken together these updates really do transform Elite from a shared World space him into something much bigger it's going to be an evolving play driven MMO where actions have lasting consequences on the Galaxy itself and these as I say are not NPC driven influence changes but rather direct player changes again all of that is just my opinion it's just speculation but well it all does seem

to fit the parts doesn't it it does seem to be the direction everything's heading in doesn't it and I don't think Frontier going to stop there I suspect that this is a direction that Frontier are going to continue to go on and that means probably the end of year update is going to be similarly related in other words further refining and expanding Elite dangerous as a true MMO giving it far more depth than it's ever had before it's something that's really nice to see and I'm glad Frontier are doing this do let me know your

thoughts and feelings about all of this in the comments section below because I'd love to hear from you as always thanks for watching this video all the way through do take care and I catch you next time and by the way there is another video on the screen right here if you want to watch that one