Some valid points from the OP, as good as the game is it seems like it's filled with cheap programming techniques designed to flesh out certain activities. If players are relogging to farm mats there is an inherent fault in the game, only being able to buy limited cargo for powerplay or engineers at a time are laughable examples too. Add things like dumb, low range collectors that cant even scoop your rewards up after wiping out a pirate wing just takes the biscuit. This game is in the future right? and collectors are dumber than a mars rover
If we are going down that route and talking about "dumb" limpets etc, then you have failed to grasp a key concept, this is a game...if we wanted to go the full route of space sim set in the future, then we would not be flying our ships at all to begin with. we would have self flying ships. several things have been changed from what is logical to fit the core vision of the game.
If you would pay attention to what the design goal of the game is, then you will see why several of the dumb things are there to begin with, then add the fact this is a multiplayer game, with instancing and you go explanation about why relogging at resource sites is working, it is not just bad programming, because the other alternative would be timed respawning and you would have all these complaints about there are never any resources when I get to <add popular sit>. would you prefer to sit in your SRV and waiting 5-10 minutes for the box to respawn? That is common solution to this issue in other multiplyer games, how stupid isn't that design based if you do a reality check on that mechanic.
What about a common thing in many games, you get some XP and some loot for killing mobs, so killing many simply rats, will give money, XP and some other random strange stuff like armour. what is that game design, how can a rat run around with breast plate,etc? And then progress systems in game, where you spend your hard earned XP in various ways to learn new things, so whack a hundred rats with a club and then you can use that XP to get better at magic? what is that game design all about, how does whacking rats with a club make you better at magic? so be careful when trying to do some reality checks about game mechanics vs the real world. Because most things in games makes no real sense in that perspective...
The ever respawning mobs in games, visit a place, kill all the mobs and then leave and comer back and now mobs are there again. my favourite place to hunt for pirates, they have 1% incluend and the total system poulation is ~14 000, so roughly 140 people are supporting this pirate faction. i have massacre mission to destroy 80 of their ships... I have been runing multiple of these missions on this system, so over the years, me and my friends have wiped out well over 10 000 of their ships, and they still keeps coming, just like rats, bandits, etc, etc keeps respawning in other games, there are very few games that actually do not respawn mobs, and none of these are multiplayer games online games, becuase what would new players do if all the mobs and resources have been collected when they start the game?
I agreee, the powerplay limit is a very sloppy way to add a time sink. but the rare gods for engineers are not a bad time sink, it is clearly meant to introducing cargo hauling, to have you fly back and forth a few times, is it bad design? no, is it explained poorly? yes. Take a look at ALL things you ned todo to unlock engineers, it is there to introduce you to most aspects of the game. You have to test everything out. And most players have some issues with certain unlock tasks, depending on what their preferred game activity was, most exploreers where upset about the combat related unlocks. and combat heavy players was mostly upset about the exploration related unlocks, and before the big mining update, most players where upset about the mining unlock, first they had to mine 500T and they most discovered they had todo even more mining to gather 10T of painite, so even more mining, now players can spend hours mining just collect alot of credits....
