In regards to instant Commander teleportation for Multicrews:
It's completely immersion breaking and destroys the unique grand sense of scale of the ED setting.
Players already need to meet up to do Wing activity together, and I don't see that being a complained about as a chore to achieve; so why would meeting up to form a crew be any different practically?
It actually is a massive chore. I routinely get invited to wings and decline because it's just not worth going more than 20 jumps. Our schedules won't allow for it, I'm gonna be spending 20 or 30 minutes getting there and by the time I get there we only have 30 minutes to play. This is not an argument for changing it, but to argue that it isn't a obstacle for some players is wrong.
I already play with my friends in Wings, and the same friends will be each other's multicrew too. We're already hanging out in the same volumes of space. This teleportation feature will be used by non-Winging players maybe only once or twice, as a complete gimmick, yet the damage to the setting's scale is already done. Those who want teleportation to support their mindless sugar-rush insta-combat gameplay (besides already having CQC/Arena), will be gone to the next flavour of the month game anyway.
Magical insta-teleportation for crew utterly devalues the intangible (but magical) quality of feeling like you're really journeying in space with your friends.
I doubt the gaming press / media will ever again bother covering the "magic and wonder" of ED's huge Exploration voyages, since it won't exist anymore.
Space Engine will be the go-to application for anyone wanting to explore the Galaxy using simple "console command" shortcuts.
For the first paragraph, I'll come back to that.
Most of this comes off as nebulous sentiment about the perceived scale of the universe, and overreaction to me. I can't really argue to your beliefs about the size of the galaxy, but I can argue to the points about the consequences. You seem to be convinced, for example, that exploration expeditions will go away. Why? I don't imagine things like Distant Worlds drying up overnight. It wouldn't make sense. There's a lot of people out there, dedicated explorers, who will still want to get out there and explore for themselves. A lot of people will want to make it to Beagle Point because they wanted to make it out there themselves. A lot of people will want to go out and wander aimlessly for the sake of seeing new sights and sounds, and finding something nobody else ever has. This will never go away just because some people have the option of teleporting to their friend's ship.
Your insinuation that the people who enjoy this kind of gameplay will disappear overnight is a personal insult to their dedication, and totally baseless.
Lots of people (probably the same people who chase fast-credit exploits), are screaming for instant-teleportation to make sugar-rush combat as easy as pressing a button, but have FD considered that the degradation of the scale of the setting will wipe away an element of the game that is difficult to pin down in terms of specific mechanics, namely the overall emotional feel of the game?
I fear FD are chasing a demographic with these arcade design choices, that has no interest in the setting, but rather are the sorts of players who only hang around for 5 minutes after an update anyway, before they go off to the next sugary buzz. The sort of player that is not interested in the journey, or exploring the depth that ED has to offer, but rather wants higher credits per hour so they can race to the "end" ship and hurriedly "beat" the game.
Basically the worry is that FD is chasing the money of arcade players who will simply be gone again after they've exhausted their initial novelty buzz of consuming new content, then leaving the core players of the game with a unsatisfying, stripped back, bland "ease of access" focused casual game.
Instant Teleportation is simply Instant Gratification.
Those who want Instant Gratification will not be gratified by the content after 3 or 4 goes of the ride, they will leave to find Instant Gratification from somewhere else.
When I play co-op we work together to navigate distances as a team, we travel across space for our gameplay purposes in concert. Managing our time and appreciating the scale of the setting is part of the tactical-strategic layer that we play in - having meaningful restrictions, limiters and tensions in our gameplay is GOOD as it demands creative thinking and more than just an arcade style point and click unthinking approach to play.
More baseless accusations. I don't like using fast cash exploits personally, it feels cheap to me. (Although I don't hold anything against the players who use them; it is the responsibility of the developers to patch exploits, not the players to not use them, and just because somebody is playing the game in a way that I don't want to doesn't mean that it should be my way or the highway. It's their game that they bought with their money, if they want to play the game differently from me I need to respect that.)
Let's return to the point I dismissed earlier. The idea that this is catering to the instant gratification crowd. Problem with this argument is that Elite: Dangerous was never an instant gratification game to begin with. The type of people you're worried about jumping ship? Don't worry, they weren't going to stick around to begin with. Those types of people probably abandoned the game years ago. Even with this new multicrew feature there's still going to be large swaths of gameplay where nothing happens, and this will not help those kinds of people. And maybe some of those people will want to eventually get their own killer ship, meaning they will jump out of their buddy's cockpit and venture among the stars on their own. This argument about the instant gratification boogeyman is chasing shadows. It's a nonissue.
The rest of your post is just retreading your personal conviction that the universe is huge and full of wonder, while ignoring that this feature will not destroy this for you or any of the players who care about it in any way whatsoever, so I'm cutting it off here. Someone you never met teleported to Beagle Point because their buddy wanted to show them what it looked like in person. Big deal, I fail to see how this will destroy the scale of the universe for you. Maybe you're worried that you will be tempted to do it yourself, that's the only conceivable way that this will impact you and your playstyle.
