This response from so other players I've talked to really has surprised me over the last year. I suppose it's a matter of perspective, but IMO the 2.0 launch with planet landings was the most fantastic part of season 2 thus far. I did a CMDR reset and used my SRV to earn up from a Sidewinder doing surface salvage missions and loved every minute. I still carry an SRV in my daily runabout Cobra, my exploration Keelback, and my Beluga for scanning surface tourist beacons.
And yet several times I hear another player say something like "I've never touched those SRVs or even landed on a planet. Nothing to do down there, no money, waste of time." when I bring up the subject. Or hear a few say that they didn't buy Horizons because they don't care about planets. It just blows me away to think such a massive and massively impressive aspect of the Elite universe could be so meaningless for these players. But again, I re-began my career down there. So maybe that gameplay is just something far closer to me, in part due to that.
Although Season 2 has been significantly longer than Season 1 (by about 4 months, so far) the sheer amount of extra stuff we have gotten this season, compared to the season 1, has made the wait very much worth it. Engineers, major & ongoing Mission System overhauls (including, but not limited to, better branching missions and now chained missions, as well as missions you can increasingly get away from the mission board), passenger contracts, ship-launched fighters, NPC crew (albeit currently limited to the SLF), Planetary Landings, Avatar Creation, Multi-Crew.....and those are just the ones that come most easily to my mind. I think people do too easily forget what has been achieved this season-maybe because nobody can remember just how "bare-bones" Season 1 really was

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yeah, it looks like they are hitting the development wall with 200 M/h
That also explains the kind of bolt on expansions we have seen lately. However on the other hand a long way out in the future could be 12 month away, we simply don't know.
I call it "managing expectations", to be honest. Remember how, in January 2016, they gave us what turned out to be a wildly optimistic appraisal of the release dates for the season 2 updates? Then remember the massive outburst from the community when those release dates weren't even close to being met? I don't blame them for not wanting to repeat that experience-hence why they're trying to keep any "promises" extremely low key.
At the end of the day, though, that is merely my theory-as only FDev themselves know what they can and cannot achieve in the space of the next 6-12 months.