Then write some Galnet articles. Or find out who Drew Wagar is and what he's been up to for the past year.
2) Powerplay + Engineering: There's enough criticism out there. From the endless grindfest of Powerplay to the PvP-Balance gap of Engineered/Unengineered and need to do grindfest material gathering. The latter was patched to be made easier, but its still concerning on how the first iteration even came about. But, as said, not going into depth here. Powerplay was a missed opportunity and Engineering feels like forcing horizon(planet)-content.
No argument from me here, I'd like to see both things reworked or improved upon. Powerplay at *least* needs an "intuitivity" pass, and Engineers - well, there's lots of suggestions, many made by myself elsewhere.
3) Holo-Me. Finally! We have our character creator! It's well done and the transitions are nice, cudos to the programmers/artists/sound-designers. But now, after waiting half a year... microtransactions! Not a single available tattoo?
I didn't notice the tattoos were microtransactions, I coulda sworn there's free ones for the neck/eyes/face...but...big deal.
Completely basic suits? I don't care you want to earn money with microtransactions, but to bring out such a anticipated feature with, in the end, half baked customization, feels awkward. It's a nice character creator, but it feels like theres not much, especially due to face limitation. I know, we don't see the character anyways, but if we already have a face-concentration, why are there so few options available? Like mentioned, no tatoos, no... future piercings, whatever the heck you can want. Again, it feels somewhat barebones and too limited. Why do I have to pay for some black ink in my face? Why are there just simple color variations of the most basic outfit? You really couldn't offer at least some *simple* alternatives? It feels... well, like a missed opportunity?
Make a list of suggestions for Holo-Me in the suggestions area.
4) Multi-Crew. Yay, a friend can fly around with me! And... shoot some stuff with cannons. I really don't know what I expected. It's somewhat fun, but in the end... its... well... a missed opportunity for something more.
There's a lot of potential for multicrew, that's for sure...mining is the one that catches my imagination most.
5) Planets. The current iterations we have. The great driving around on planets with some bases. So you obviously have a procedural generation for the planets. Who basically all look the same as they are moons. And don't feel different... as they are moons. It's fine. I accept that. But again, everything feels absolutely the same. There's no difference from Moon A to B in terms of gameplay except some materials you actually scope (and the ruins-events). Missions on moons feel barebones too. Why aren't, at least in the bubble near populated systems, some generated human bases with turrets and protective fliers?
I've found quite a few of bases, with turrets and protective fliers, as POIs...and there's also settlements...and surface ports...? Have you just not found any yourself? I'm not even a big fan of driving around in SRVs, myself....
6) Ship Customization. Well, I literally can't do anything without buying anything out of the store with additional money. Theres not even anything ingame to obtain to customize my ship. What is this? Why, just why, aren't there some goals? Your playerbase is big. There aren't only grinders who try this game out. You have to hook people to want some progression other than money(and thus ships). Its like the most basic concept one can think of. What happened here? Its, again, a missed opportunity and makes it feel even more cash-shoppy.
Meh. If all they're monetizing are cosmetics, out of all the potential other ways to 'ask' for money (can you imagine if Elite had "premium time"?), it does not bug me in the slightest. Ten minutes in just about any other online game available cures any annoyance I have that I won't be putting a spoiler on my Python without forking over a dollar or two.
Like, if they decide to offer *some* cosmetics as rewards for certain things, like honorary military ranks, that'd be neat of course, but it's not a big deal to me.
7) Background-Simulation. What is actually happening here? In the terms of "what does it actually do" ?. What is your code doing? We obviously don't have something persistent thats interacting with the players at all. We have some number tweeking with wares and minor faction influences and their spreading. Different people will have their own reasons to join powerplay and help minor factions, mainly due to roleplay reasons. That's cool, at least. But the Background-Simulation really feels to fall flat and to serve no real purpose concerning wares and trade.
I'm going to be lazy and just say there's good explanations of the BGS available somewhere.
But Minor Factions! I can have my own? AWESOME. Except for people who have to wait over 3 months to have it inserted. I simply can NOT comprehend how the insertion can last this long. I'm still waiting and I have no problems doing so, but others clearly want them integrated. So, you obviously have lists every time of, lets say, 30 new minor factions of players. You can't tell me that you can't take one guy after checking availability to simply insert them into the game for the next update. There has to be some interface in your code for this. There must be. I can't believe that you are writing code snippets for every insertion. Where is the automated system after accepting and checking? (Or even accepting and checking too).
This, I admit, is a pet peeve of mine, even though I'm just some solo schmuck. I think this might be an area where, like I pointed out regarding Multicrew rewards, Elite would benefit by looking at a certain, ancient java game called Puzzle Pirates and how they have crews and flags and so on. The backlog for player group creation and faction insertion is just outrageous, I really think Fdevs should take the time to focus on creating a system in the game to deal with the act of forming player groups and playing as a minor faction. Even if it still took a day to chew through and safely integrate with the BGS, that would exponentially better than taking 3-6+ months at a time - sometimes just for each step in the process....
That and not making the community managar deal with all the player groups by himself on top of all his other duties. That job needs a dedicated attendant.
8) 3rd-party Tools. Half of the time when trading I have to check on another website OUTSIDE the game where I can get something. Why? Its some g time in the future where everything is connected in some way(see Galnet) - But there is no ingame function to actually check that stuff? This seems like the first thing stations would want to publish to sell goods and get more traffic. Not to mention resource-route determination. Why do I have to switch OUT of the game to get stuff done efficiently? You clearly want me to loose every immersion possible, right? Failed opportunity.
An ingame version of eddb.io and so on would be cool and all...but I can also just use eddb.io. Browsing the internet = browsing the galnet, as it were; it would be REALLY NICE if Fdev would open up trade markets and outfitting services with the API, though....
Having a laptop or using borderless windowed mode helps.
Something is clearly wrong.
I can condense the rest of your post into two words: "I'm frustrated." Simple, to the point, no insults, saves time.
