I get tired of hearing why people's opinions are wrong. The audience can't be wrong. If 1/2 the audience are unhappy, those are the ratings. End of story.
I don't know about people saying others are wrong, I personally am saying that people can easily play and do stuff they want without having to grind, the problem seems to come from those that want x item to 'be able' to do something, because apparently, you can't do it without, which just doesn't seem true.
*shrug* FDev turned open into an arms race. You can either grind to keep up or not play Open. Or play Open and know that the longer the game goes on the more likely it is you'll encounter a player you have no hope of beating, skill be damned.
I just don't see it? I am doing fine in open and with my unmodified asp, flying around doing a bit of whatever I want to, though granted currently not playing 'that' much because I feel like I'm melting because of the weather, but that aside, it isn't really an arms race, at least not on a whole, if you want to find and fight other people in PvP constantly, then yeah, those with engineer mods will have advantages.
But for everyone else it isn't really an arms race, a trader might be able to stand a slightly better chance against a pirate, but that pirate is on the other side probably going to be upgraded anyway, so it evens out, you end up giving them the cargo, and in the case of those blowing up traders and others for fun, that hasn't changed either, since they pick weaker targets.