Firstly, Fdev aren't doing this because of greed, they are doing it because of desperation, and this entire plan reeks of it. So I'll just ignore the rest of your criticism on that point.
Secondly, The issue that people are on about in terms of Pay 2 Win, is the Pre-built ships thing, not the "Get early access to a ship thing", that's the red herring and the bait to get the player base to swallow the whole "Pay real money for ships" thing. And for precisely the reasoning you just said "Hey, it's not exclusive, it's just early access like, paid beta." Which Fdev also did for Odyssey.
And what nobody seems to be commenting about, or if they are they are being vague in saying "Oh this will make the grind worse".
Let's be specific, if Fdev is doing prebuilt ships, either engineered or not, this incentivizes them to rebalance the game in two ways, making credits harder to obtain by lowering payouts globally and making engineering materials harder to obtain by lowering the drop rates globally. Which then after a fair amount of time and people accept all of this like a frog on a hotplate. You will see "Engineering Material packs" made available int he arx store, maybe even a "Tritium Delivery" for fleet carriers, because by then mining will have been nerfed again.
And to be honest, given that Fdev stated unequivocally that ARX would not be used to usher in any Pay 2 Win mechanics, I would even go so far as to point out and state that them doing this is a violation of a written contract. whether it be actionable or not, it's also just a bad idea.
There is something seriously wrong with the management of this company, because it's not just Elite that's suffering, Fdev's performance over the last few years has been one hit after another after another.
I kind of wish I had Nelson Peltz's phone number, I'd call him and ask him if he wants to buy a gaming company and fix it up. (That's what he does by the way. fixes up companies from their own f*** ups)
