The basic idea of being able to upgrade and customize your ship is a really exiting one, It makes me remember that scene in Star Wars when Han Solo declares that he has made some special modifications to the Millenium Falcon, and that is somethng that at heart really interests me....
....But, Given that the shoddy multiplayer trader/prirate/ bounty hunter gameplay mechanics pretty much ensure that no meaningfull PvP ever happens, (i've now started to combat log from the Griefers who attack without any game reason) so for me, there is really little point in all the grind to improve modules.... as they are simply not going to enhance my game at all.....
The wall you're going to hit here I'd suggest is, many players seem happy with these simplistic random mini-game mechanics. And when yet more are developed they seem fine with that.
We're 18months into this game, and now in 2.1 a huge development effort has been dedicated to The Engineers. Now this is made up of two elements, the ability to craft, and then a huge supporting structure to make you "work" to pay for the crafting.
Now that's all well and good, and let's assume the crafting itself is a valid use of the development time. ie: Are you happy development time is invested so you have have a 15% more powerful beam laser? Is that a good use of that time? Let's assume yes!
So let's instead look at the design and development effort at the surrounding mechanics. What we have, yet again, are FD dishing out a bucket of very simplistic time sponge mechanics. We're 18 months into the game, and a new element of gameplay (to use my favour current example) is to sit at a station or NAV beacon, point your ship at wakes, and press a button, over and over... Does this sound like a type of gameplay you would wish to see actively designed and developed? What does such gameplay bring to the game? Why is this sort of gameplay being added in favour of the huge list of seemingly far more interesting elements that could have instead have been done that seemingly would actually be propelling the gameplay forwards?
If you're someone who enjoys these types of mechanics great.
Personally I'm just getting more and more confused why we're:-
a) Getting yet more and more of these sort of mechanics added to ED?
b) More importantly, why we're getting them in favour of improvements and other gameplay developments that would surely actually move gameplay onto to a more interesting and logical levels.
Are you like me? Where I look at these new mechanics surrounding The Engineers and wonder why we're getting yet more of these simplistic time sponge repeat over and over mechanics, clearly at the expense of development time that could have been spent at trying to move the game forwards to something more involved, deeper, interesting and logical? Note: And these range of course from small improvements (eg: NPC pirate giving clear terms/demands before going jihad) to large ones (eg: NPC crew, exploration content, piracy reputation/bases, mining improvements, Wing missions, fighter escort for platforms/stations/capital ships, etc...)
