Seems more like a 'we're done with development - have fun' parting gesture (which is good - more player agency / less fdev oversight is probably the right direction)
I guess that's why I've lost interest for the most part... less player agency was the drawcard... but FD also failed in
not designing with less FD oversight in mind as well.
BGS driven is essentially "player led but you need a spreadsheet to figure out how", though. Keeping it more direct and transparent lets people get on with the actual interesting bit and is probably easier for Frontier to balance the resource requirements for expansion with a desired pace for it.
To a point... i think BGS simply puts more guard rails around crazy stuff happening, and i wonder if FD have fully thought through the potential repercussions around this, regardless of implementation.
Since the impact of mineral price changes on mission payouts wasn't forecast, i doubt it.
Sadly, making things more direct and transparent is exactly what's caused the galaxy to lose it's charm. There was opportunity to create a galaxy leaning into the procedural, where there's a constantly changing environment creating drastically new situations meaning even undertaking the same activities would yield new opportunities needing different ways to exploit them.
Instead, it's just predictable and lacking any sense of discovery now. But that's been in train a long time now... guess i hoped that was just placeholder, but now that's been delegated to players... ymmv but that's boring for me, and this just solidifies that.
Guess the game's changed tact to appeal to popular concepts, rather than novel. It's a choice
