You see, here's the thing. If you had written your original point exactly like this then I wouldn't have replied, I would have let the point you are making ride - as it is a valid point. The problem wasn't with the point you were making, but the way you made it. Call me thinned skinned - but there are constructive ways of making points and underhanded dismissive ways. The latter do injustice to the point being addressed as they will inevitably sidetrack the converstation.
As for the issue itself, we can argue over the definition of "Too Hard", vs "Bad Design" all night (my thoughts 'Dark Souls' = Hard. "The Division" was widely considered Bad Design upon release). The Engineers fits towards the bad design scale in my opinion. But that is just my opinion which carries no more weight then anyone else's...and we all know what opinions are worth.
Eitherway Frontier work damn hard on Elite and they clearly love the game - and have given me hours of fun for which I am extremely grateful.
And as to how all this applies to some of the proposed mechanics for 2.3, I partially agree with you. If people pay attention and test early iterations of things, it's likely mistakes can be avoided. However on the other hand, people have been saying for over a year now, that Elite is too thinly developed and has too shallow gameplay to offer any sort of deep and complex multi-crew system. And despite people saying for over a year that the main game needs to be fleshed out in order to support multi-crew, and despite people offering vast amount of feedback to Frontier on exactly this issue, it never actually made any difference. This isn't the first time either, we still got Powerplay, we still got The Engineers, and we will still get the current proposed version of Multi-Crew.
We can all discuss where to lay the blame for that...but to me it is pretty clear.
Focusing on where we agree..... yes I think more attention is needed at testing and early iterations, on both sides, from the devs and from the players involved. I know a lot of people with beta who don't use it to test the new features, they just test engineering combinations because its far easier to do in beta than to waste maybe a dozen hours in live gathering the resources only to find even a perfect roll doesn't suit your playstyle or your ship or whatever. So much stuff seems to get missed in beta its unbelievable! I know they are currently hiring more QA and I hope that will help (if its for ED and not PC or Safari if it isn't for ED I suggest they need more QA) but also they need better feedback from players in beta.
As an example on the gimballed changes in the first 3 days of the beta before I got bored reading the thread there for feedback on this change there were only about 6-7 players who actually tested it who gave detailed feedback, not just "it's good/it sucks" but gave metrics on how much slower there ship was due to needing a sensors it's lesser turn rate etc etc. In short the stuff you need from "proper testing" and the sort of feedback that's useful.... "it blows" is really useless feedback. And despite being a coder myself I know I'm as guilty of this as anyone (though usually over on the steam forums) and often when I do sit down and test something - such as running the numbers to find my harmless crew was taking 10% its not even acknowledged despite having replicatable and verifable evidence, and you'll just see people saying "mines fine, must be your fault", people who don't understand that bugs tend not to effect everyone or the devs would have spotted it in testing! But they usually arise through a set of circumstances that wasn't tested, or in "edge cases"
How to improve the quality of feedback though? Tricky one, personally I would like if the Devs issued "test plans" of what they'd like people to look out for, along with the sort of feedback they are looking for "can you gather before and after stats for your particular loadout in live and in beta" for example, this I think would really help. I also think megathreads like this are pointless, there are too many issues being discussed to have a proper conversation, by the time you read this they'll be 10+ new posts maybe several pages! So much stuff about 2.3 isn't being discussed - like 3rd person gunner cam - because it just gets swallowed by the mass and is hard to track. A thread at least for each headline feature is a must with devs reading and acknowledging good points (rather than joking about genitalia scaling) some say it's the devs trying to limit feedback, I don't think it is, but it doesn't give a good impression IMO
Then people need to stop trying to shut down discussion with "wait till beta/wait to implementation" NO! If they don't want to discuss they are free to walk on by! Discussing at this stage is IMO vital, and can if done right make the devs sit up and take not that perhaps they are going the wrong way, or consider something they hadn't before - like an exploit. We also have enough info, for example we know moving between ships not owned by us will be instant, we know rewards for crew will vastly exceed those for wings etc etc. We don't need more info to talk these things through!
And of course we need to get away from the "everything is awesome/everything is awful" dialog, no game is perfect, I can think of problems even with my top 5 GOAT's! I've been told on the same thread before I'm trolling and white knighting for the same point! The devs do do some things well - they made a great galaxy as I believe we agree - they do other things average, and others not so good. This is life, no one is perfect, sometimes people make bad decisions, sometimes people have bad days etc etc so those either defending or condemning everything stop sensible discussion of pros/cons to different parts of the game.
For example I'm happy with what I know about the commander creator, I'm undecided about some multi-crew mechanics, I'm not happy with 3rd person cam.
Finally I also think that fdev have on a number of occasions gone down the wrong path due to misjudging the player base - which of course is not one blob, or even two, but many individuals who have different opinions on different things, people branded "casuals" on one thread are calling for more realism elsewhere etc, the devs seem though to not really understand what the majority want, now it's their game and of course they are within their rights to make it their way....but if they want to do that just don't ask for feedback! The moment you ask for feedback you better be willing to listen! But doing some "requirements gathering" prior to design by speaking to the community would probably be beneficial. I often wonder if the Triple Elite groups and their much vaunted "hotline to the devs" give the devs the impression that the community is different to how it really is, I don't think they, the early backers, the beta players or even the forum warriors (in which I include myself) are representative. So they need to widen the "feedback net" so to speak, but do it prior to investing huge amounts of time into features they then redo!
The devs also need to learn lessons from past mistakes, I hope they had a good sit down first week of the year and went through what went well last year, what didn't and work out what they are going to do better this year, and they keep reviewing after each update, I hope they do this, but then I also see the same mistakes coming through time after time.
Finally FDev also often seem to be pulling in different directions, like Braben and his hour long stream last summer on the importance of realism, swiftly followed by the announcement of instant ship movement by Sandro! And for me this is a problem. The devs need to get together and decide who is running the show, who's vision they are following, because they seem to flip/flop too much from one extreme to the other. Now I'm course I'm sure they have an answer to this, but from the outside looking in it doesn't look like they are all singing from the same hymn sheet. I'd like to be wrong on that!
Now I'm going to rest....that's way to much blather for anyone!
