Quote snipped for the point I want to make. I do get the sense that Frontier is "throwing us a bone" that they might not have otherwise. For example, why after months (if not years), now Frontier has finally decided to fix megaship looting? Same goes for module storage increase. It feels like Frontier is saying, "Give them something, anything, to calm down the angry crowd. Heck, give them Barabbas if that's what they want!"
That's pretty much it. When Braben posted his last update, he promised to get EDO up to standard and add some new features. Of course he gave no details on any of this, which is why I personally concluded that what we were likely to see is stuff that was already planned for the future, at best rolled out ahead of schedule, such as the on-foot Thargoid combat and new SRV models that were data-mined a few months ago *. So far, all we've seen are very small 'quality of life' changes and other 'low hanging fruit' which is in keeping with this strategy of expending a minimum of resources on ED in general.
So he's delivering on the letter of his promises, which then the community reads into and imagines ship interiors and Panther Clippers, even though none of these have ever been promised. We're our own worst enemies, in that we keep on projecting our dreams based on, intentionally, vague language - the no VR
"at launch" is the best example of this; it clearly implies that VR would be added some time after launch, but does not actually commit to it. So when they admitted they were no longer going to develop VR, they didn't technically break any promises, and then to add insult onto injury - seeing the negative reaction of this admission - they tried to pull the same trick again, with their
"never say never" caveat. Problem is that at this stage, they've cried wolf one too many times, so only the most ardent member of the Church of Braben believes them.
And yes, I'm speculating, but I'm also looking for silver linings in a very dark cloud, and if Odyssey being a failure at launch ends up giving us a better product a year from now, then maybe this is actually a good thing.
It's pretty clear that EDO has received far more resources to deal with it's issues than it otherwise would have had the community remained silent. But, at least to me, it's also clear that beyond fixing bugs and performance only to a level that will keep the community quiet, we're unlikely to see any significant development in Odyssey until the next DLC, presuming there is one. So it is a 'good thing', but unfortunately Pyrrhic in nature. So I suspect that the next few years will see slow improvement in performance and stability, but very little new content added to the game. Question is whether, after years in effective maintenance mode, whether the game can survive more years like that?
Of course this too is speculation, but in fairness, there's no shortage of evidence to arrive at what is a pretty clear conclusion at this stage.
* There's no guarantee either of these will ever see the light of day. ED appears to have been built like a giant prototype, with lot's of half baked features that were added then abandoned. Both the on-foot Thargoid combat and new SRV models could easily be things that were partially added, after which the feature was dropped, without anyone bothering to clean up the assets that were added to the game.