I don't see FD forcing anyone to choose a particular play style at all. I play Horizons, I have 1 Engineer upgrade, a mediocre grade 5 extended range FSD, I don't feel forced to grind anything at all, over and above the usual cash grind which is the easiest part of the game by a long way.
If you don't like those missions (or they are broken which a lot still are) don't do them. Don't get all emotional about it, send a Ticket if you think something is wrong and do something else.
I do agree the Engineer grind is currently too much of one but, unlike so many, I have positive suggestions to make that could alleviate it
- Offer missions at Engineers which reward you with the materials you need to create mods at the specific Engineer from which you accept it.
- Offer overpriced Cargo items for those upgrades available from the Engineer you are currently at and no other commodities. Do not allow selling of commodities at the Engineer bases.
- Remove material rewards from all other missions not available from Engineers
- Offer mod tweaking at a price, the larger the tweak to a particular mod stat, the more expensive it should be (and these should be bloody expensive for large changes too)
- Offer weapon mods that add a specific effect to a component but which only otherwise have negative effects. No randomly added effects which potentially cause a weapon to become a trifecta god like joke. You can make the materials for these harder to get too
This patch shows that FD are on the ball with this as far as bugs and balancing things are concerned, as a software developer myself I know it is impossible to get all the things that need to be done immediately.
Perhaps they could use ideas and motivation rather than negativity.