Devari,
Let's table the whole grind discussion, since it really is off-topic. I doubt I'll ever convince you that "it'll take longer, but you'll have fun," is a viable alternative to actually grinding, and you'll never convince me that I'm somehow suffering through a boring grind when I'm enjoying myself.
That's fine, we certainly have very different approaches to gameplay in Elite, but my point here was simply that I have chosen to take on many significant grinds (notably Engineering and Naval rank) which you have decided to avoid which certainly means we have had very different gaming experiences to draw on in Elite.
Here's where I disagree with this topic. Everything I've read and seen, including in the game itself, indicates to me that these new features are currently undergoing development, but are not presently the main focus of development.
If FD has been working hard on space legs, boarding actions and inhabited worlds this entire time, and have some significant progress to show us by late 2018/early 2019? Then I'm fine with that. I seriously doubt it's the case though, considering the low-quality and delays we've seen with Horizons content, the underwhelming Thargoid "content" and the quality of what we've gotten so far from Beyond. I really have trouble believing that with what we've seen from FD so far that Elite is being adequately developed.
One of the many ways Frontier demonstrates their inexperience with MMOs, especially the type they've created with Open Mode, is that they keep expecting mechanics intended to make player on NPC crimes fun and challenging, to actually deter player on player crime. What actually deters player on player crime is the low player density of the game, between the sheer size of inhabited space and Frontier's decision to go with a peer-to-peer network topology.
My issue goes far deeper than whether Elite has the proper architecture to support adequate player interactions, which is something that FD can't really "fix" at this stage. My issue here is that FD doesn't seem to properly understand their own game or rely on the community to provide useful feedback. They seem to "know" how they "want" the game to be played and this often has no relation to how the game is currently played or even how it has been designed to operate. The issue with the C&P rework wasn't just that it was misguided and ineffective, it was based on an understanding of the game that was fundamentally disconnected from the experiences described by players on these forums. Much like when FD arbitrarily decided to nerf gimbals, only to find that was utterly misguided due to the implications of the flight model and combat system the game has had since launch. FD quite honestly does not seem to understand their own game much of the time and that is a problem when trying to actually improve core gameplay features.
This lack of experience has created the numerous delays that has caused Horizons to be spread out over two years, and has added some of the planned features in Beyond to their development plan.
I would suggest here, as I have in other threads, that FD is certainly capable of producing good content for Elite when adequately supported with the resources they need, but these resources have not been provided during much of Elite's development due to FD's focus on other products. As a result I'm far more critical of the underlying reasons for why Elite isn't being properly developed than I am about FD's ability to make a good game, although admittedly I am not impressed by the way they have been using what limited resources they do have available, i.e., the Engineering rework and C&P rework in beyond were unnecessarily complicated and in many ways created more new problems than they "solved".
