Ok, let me be sincere. And try to explain to you why your viewpoint is not overly appliable.
Trust me, I do understand your standpoint. But thing is, people are different.
Firstly, answer yourself a question: why do you play this game? And why do you play games overall?
And I'll give you my answer. In short, "Achievement unlocked".
And that is the only reason why people play video games. Trust me, this is the truth, whether you understand it or not.
At least the goal always should be present. Presence of a goal is what defines a video game, whether is a long or short-term one.
It is the pace people take to achieve one of such goals can be different. In my case, at least, I cannot take slow pace to achieve anything in the game. My play time is limited.
And take top-selling games. None of them contain long-term goals, without the abundance of short-term ones at least.
People play video games to shift their attention from problems. Fully or to some extent. I myself play Solitare while I think about something, in order to reduce the effect of situation's gravity on my decisions.
This is their only purpose. Some people use it to divert their attention from small problems. Some people cover questions of the purpose of life with them. And anything in between.
Life by itself has no purpose. This can be argued upon, but that is not the point. Point is that video games remove that answer or question itself from person's field of view.
And this to extends about every aspect of life. Take religions for example. Take personal life building. Take money making. Take alcohol or drugs.
Means can be different, whether it is a "grind" of "righteousness" for delayed gratification of eternal life, or assembling money for gaining power to do right things somewhere in the future, and with power usually used to get more money, or drunken haze/bliss of love simply erasing all questions from your head.
All of this can be subliminal or can be understood and accepted by different people. But the fact is a fact.
And it is important to understand that road have the same importance as the goal itself. In fact, the road is more important.
Especially for games.
Such "road" is what is called
gameplay.
Video games are the quintessence of such activities. All of the vagueness of real life is removed. You have a clear and tangible goal. And you have means to achieve it. Then you can restart or you can proceed to the next (different or subsequent) goal.
This is why ED is a game and Space Engine is not.
And all of this is or should be understood by any game developer in order to create a successful game. And you can already start to understand where Fdev fails.
- Take GTA for example. "I completed Vice City and all I got was this lousy t-shirt". It is all about gameplay.
- Take WoW. All of those "bring 12 bear rears" stuff disappears from progression at some point. Which gives enough of a drive to pull through. Then your knowledge of the game and social qualities take top priority. Not to mention that you have alternatives to quest grind from the beginning.
- Take Dark Souls. Imagine it without leveling system and loot. And it's the only flaw is that P2P specifics remove all competitive value from high-end activities, which are PvP.
- Take Dota. It takes about 30 minutes to achieve victory or fail to do so at current meta. To climb one step higher on the ladder or fail at that. And the amount of skill you can achieve is unlimited. I am still at top 100 on one of the heroes by dotabuff ladder, but I am by no means a top-notch player.
Where is ED in that mess? All progression is basic and consists of fetch quests or waiting for a month. And you have no interchangeable alternatives in ways to achieve lastest goals. You have some for money, but all of them are dull and all you can get from applying your game knowledge is a money exploit, which gives you the ability to complete the single dull repetitive task to maximize your credits per hour.
Thargoid genocide is removed from progression, you cannot even see how many you had slain. PvP leaderboards are absent. And the grandfathering balance decision kills validity of "create the best PvP ship" goal almost entierly, at least for big ships. I can go on and on. All of it is pretty obvious if you really think about it.
And the facts that this game have crapton more potential and it has no alternatives in setting,
makes all of this simply insulting.
All that Fdev does is baits people into buying the game by putting more and more concepts inside without polishing them whatsoever.
I do not know why it is that way. It is either developers are infantile or they simply do not care what comes after you buy the game, whether because of laziness or a cold calculation. Probably by an inconcious mixture of both.
But fact that given all potential, ED does not try to become something more than Solitare or fails horribly at that, is unquestionable.
