Well being a developer myself I do tend to see where things could have been improved, the stance system for jumpdrive for example worked fine in Elite Multiplayer when we had people playing it before the 'cease and desist'. I put the Ian Bell statement in there as it has been said elsewhere that this is the game they had originally intended when Elite was released.
Basically the whole universe in ED is miniscule, as an example you only see stations when your right on top of them. Basically the whole thing isnt there until its within range of being displayed hence the supercruise is basically a instancing thing so you can go from a-b a bit quicker. When your in range of a station you drop out and its loaded in for you to see. Have a look at (
http://www.edzup.co.uk/SRDemo/SRDemo.html ) same size system just top down.
This is providing they actually ADD stuff on planets that will make it interesting four hundred billion empty rocks will get boring as quick as four hundred billion empty star systems. Alternatively No Mans Sky would also get as boring if all the aliens and indigenous creatures all looked the same.
What difference would it make to your game if there were less systems in ED?
You would still need SC to travel between celestial bodies in a system and you would still need hyperspace to get between systems.
Space is mind bogglingly big. 10000 systems or 400 billion would not make much difference to that (except players would have already explored all of the systems if it were 10000).
When they add planetary it will be adding more variety over time (gas giants, airless moons, planets with life roaming around). FD want to get it right (and provide a suitable amount of difference between each) using procedural generation as they have been doing with stations, outposts and celestial bodies.
You don't see things until you are right in top of them for two reasons; because anything else would require some artificial magnification - how much of a ship on the horizon (a few kms away) can you actually see? and for game engine efficiency - there isn't a 3d game made where they don't do this by adding a draw distance, by putting you in a zone/room or by obscuring your view distance by other objects.
I think you may be missing the point of having so many systems. It is about having the freedom to choose where you want to go, to be able to play in heavier populated systems or in areas where there are few or no players. Visiting every system and expecting it to be
completely different and have a distinct purpose is for games with a small number of hand crafted zones. Games which have to be expanded once players become bored with the ones you have.
The whole point of procedural generation is that it gives you a greater freedom because you are not limited to the number of systems created by a developer. That is the same for games in the pipeline line like single player low poly toonish No Man's Sky or multi-player hi-res games like ED.
Supercruise is far more than an instancing place holder or loader screen (like the hyperspace jump mechanism which definitely is). It allows freedom to travel through space at FTL speeds but also has to deal with being able to drop you into an instance anywhere at any time (which is why you get the loading sequence).
I am sure all of us would like to have a completely seamless experience but in an MP environment that is an extremely big technical ask. There isn't a game out there that does it in an MP environment except where world travel speeds are slow enough to allow continuous background loading of the next area to appear within your draw distance. The speeds we are effectively travelling in SC makes that impossible.
Not sure I get the point you are trying to make here. Are you saying the variation that you see is not enough for you (or too subtle) or that you have no interest in it so FD shouldn't waste their time on it?
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