Beg to differ, but maybe to you, the Anaconda is the end game, but not to me and from what I have read, not to a lot of players, and nowhere in the game does it allude to any benefit of having one of the Big 3.
To put it simply, if a large ship wasn't a relevant and strong driving goal in elite, why do so many shoot for it? I've streamed the game and interacted with a
lot of people, and the universal take from that, is a
large percentage of those people shoot for Anaconda. It happens far more than you'd think. This isn't something the game is ambivalent about. It funnels people into medium and large ships, via 'progression' (the same thing commanders swear by as being important).
It doesn't matter what I think, or want. That's pretty much irrelevant, actually. The game
does funnel commanders into larger ships, and trying to claim it doesn't, just perpetuates the cycle.
Have you ever stopped to think
why it it is that "too many new players set their sights on Anaconda, or worse..". A few people? Sure, coincidence. A bunch of people? Maybe. A lot of people? Hmm. A really big lot of people? Yeah look the developer is great, and I've no malice toward them, or commanders who elect to shoot for large ships, or not. It's all good.
Folks are playing the game. That's enough for me.
But to continue to put forth the notion that the developer hasn't quite obviously stacked the deck here, and that there hasn't been thought put into player progress, really is missing the point; they have. It could have been any ship, really, that had the same distortive levels of value.
But if you want to have the community accept a stick, you still need a carrot. The community might
perpetuate the value of the carrot. But it's still there in black and white, regardless of what the community says or thinks. And when you then look at module costs and other factors that are part of the game, it becomes pretty readily apparent what's going on.
We're all masters (and mistresses) of our own destiny, and can elect to a degree what we do; but don't for a moment suggest the developer doesn't have intent here and it's all just the forums. There's a very big part of the community that's never been here. Sometimes, the developer does things on purpose. Agree or not, doesn't really matter. It's there, regardless.
I don't particularly care either way, to be fair. But I do find it a little odd, that people still think this is entirely a manufactured thing, and not at least partly instigated by the developer. Because it's pretty evident, that it is.