Come on, MB has repeated it several times, there IS a storyline regarding the Barnacles, the UAs and everything Thargoid related

D). Do you seriously need him to make an announcement in bold with a big-asp font? Just click the "frontier" icon on the top left corner for proof.
Now, they went for an inductive approach, meaning they give us hypotheses/exercises (Galnet News, Meta-Alloys description, strange logo on the Barnacles) and we have to find the rule (basically the answer to the mystery) by ourselves. This rule will never change, but the paths that lead to it may, depending on our actions. Now could they do it better? They sure could yeah, by removing asap those nasty frustrating bugs. But when you think about it, is it such a big deal? Some of us (and I write us 'cause it's happened to me more times than I'd like to admit) get so much into it that we tend to exaggerate and get angry easily. Last week I thought I'd come back, and I spent several hours in the Witch Head Nebula for nothing. I couldn't find anything, no Barnacles. I thought I had wasted my time on that goddamned wild goose chase. I was about to rage quit the game (again) when my GF said "wow, your game looks beautiful!". And indeed, it was.
We are the ones making it a grind. In itself, E: D is what we make of it.
If all you need is MB to tell you "yeah my dear little iFred, we've planned it all so you can resume your search", then you haven't paid any attention to his posts and yeah you should stay away from the game for a while. No offense.