Heh heh, I think you might be right. I'll hold my hand up to it.
Except that 'empowering' isn't what some players are after.
I had a fleet of ships that I used in very specific ways. This isn't something I can just wave a magic wand and get back to- all of my progress from 2014 Beta to late 2018 was wiped out by power creep. I don't have four years to spare to play catch up!
You seem very proud of adding a few combat mods to your battleship. Good for you! But try to understand that some of us never aspired to owning an 'annie'. My fleet consists of much smaller ships, with a few large traders and specialist builds thrown in to do the things my 'go fasts' simply can't.
If all I wanted was the ability to annihilate NPCs with ease I'd have bought a Federal Corvette in 2015 and stuffed it full of engineered weapons when engineering first came out. That isn't what I wanted then and it certainly isn't what I want today.
My stockpile of mats- constantly gathered during normal gameplay from when engineering first came out in 2016- wasn't enough to fully engineer my mission runner. Months of grinding later I still hadn't fully engineered it. Even setting up a lower threshold- G3, say- it would take most of this year to engineer the most useful components on my fleet. That's a commitment to not playing the game for a huge amount of time, just to allow me to get back to playing the game. It doesn't strike me as a particularly effecient use of my very limited leisure time.
For comparison, I spent about three months grinding ED at the start of the year. It was utterly demoralising, it felt like a chore, it burned me out.
Since stopping, I've completed two adventure games I had stashed on their hardest settings, purchased a new flight sim, have learned to fly a number of the new sims study level models, played through several campaigns in my older sims and made a start on a campaign in the new one. I'm getting my PvP kicks in tank shooters and flight sims, I'm getting my PvE ones flying warbirds over breathtakingly beautiful terrestrial scenery that's pushing my gaming rig's graphics to the limit. I get my 'dangerous' interactions in PvP and PvE environments by flying over contested airspace.
Three months of misery, trying to get back to where I started, versus three months of excitement and constant progress.
As my 'murican friends would say- it's a no brainer!
Good for you mate! But see above. 'Knowing where to go', covering my galmap with bookmarks, carrying out internet searches- and a whole lot else besides- isn't fun, immersive or rewarding in my experience. Yours is obviously different and I hope that continues for you.
