Allow me to address the following, with bold text to answer.
-Long load times. You MUST begin loading transition sooner than you are. There's a thread here about that. Look it up. Ten or more seconds per transition, with 50 or more transitions in a weeknight play session...too much down time. We want to play, not watch.
Something sounds very off, my transitions take less then a second normally unless there are server issues. Might be beyond frontier's control? ISP? bad router setup? e.t.c.?
-Spreadsheet Management: I want increased FSD range. What I DONT want: grinding mats. Tracking what I need using Alt+tab 5 times a night. Being forced to mine, or haul freight. Or drive those boring buggies.
With respect, what should it be then? should there be no cost associated with getting the FSD range boost? should you just go there and click to get it? also you do not need spread sheets, all the info is in game, pin the thing you want, go get it
All mats should be available on the market, as drops from exploded ships, etc. Get back to letting me play my way, says the casual gamer, and stop forcing me to play yours.
Play the way you want, does not mean you can do anything you want, it means play the game that you are given in any way you can in the game, just fyi, so yeah, this IS frontier's game. Though I think materials will eventually get some form of trading
Moreover, show me what I have the Mata to build. Right there, IN your game. Every time I have the mats to complete any recipe from ANY engineer I have unlocked, show me. Right in my ship.
Your approach is flawed, you just said 'let me play the game as i want' now you are saying 'but tell me what is the 'best' so i can do that' Here's the thing, nothing is the 'best' the whole 'meta' thing is at best a self imposed thing by players, I have not used any of the meta's that have been presented and I've done just fine, so can you, so think up a way you want to play and play it, there is no internal competition in the game on that aspect.
Lastly: give me the ability to craft the items RIGHT IN MY SHIP, WITH NO WAIT. Every time you make me alt tab to check a re open, or fly halfway across the bubble to craft something, you are pushing me toward quitting your game. You're wasting my time again.
So you want to be able to engineer upgrade your ship without being at the engineer? What would be the point of it at all then?
I, and others like me, lead a busy life, at the center of which video games do not sit. If you want me, my ample free time and my not inconsiderable disposable income, stop wasting my time.
So do many many other players, but we are still able to enjoy a game that doesn't hand us everything, this is a long term game, if you get everything handed to you, why would you keep playing? there is quite a difference between 'wasting your time' and being so easy that a game becomes boring
As with:
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To all these mentioned, I can most assuredly say it is not killing the game, the game popularity is steadily increasing, so there is that.
Also you cannot compare RL to a game and should not, why? because playing a game should not BE RL.
as for "Long grind/forced combat/piracy" ok, what SHOULD happen in the game? you go from a to b and then back again over and over? with no one challenging you or such? because it seems from the way you are writing this, that that is what you want, you want to be given everything, that there should be no challenge, no wait, no effort, what would be the point of the game then? there are tons upon tons of games out there like this, please go play those instead of wanting to change Elite into one of those. Let Elite be what Frontier wants it to be. And consider, that if you are here playing it instead of the thousands of other games you COULD be playing, then Frontier must be doing something right?
And to sum up the rest.
Spreadsheets: you do not need them, if you think you do, you have not realised that all the info you need is in game.
'no internet': This is a space, and Elite has no faster then light communication, so yeah, that's why we have no global internet as such.
Calling lead developer misguided, is a bit of an oddity to me, you are here, you are playing, clearly they did it right.
And as for generally 'wasting your time' ...you are playing a game, entertainment, you are by definition, wasting your time playing _ANY_ game instead of doing productive stuff, so yeah...
Honestly I think you are in the minority, I cannot play as much as I want, but I in no way would want Elite to be turned into what you suggest, because it seems you just want to be able to click a button and get stuff, click a button and go somewhere, because otherwise it is a waste of your time?
And at the same time you give warframe credit? a game which I personally find grindy and boring, and quite without anything new, it isn't my type of game, so I do not play it.
Maybe, and this is not said to push your suggestions or you away, but maybe, just maybe, Elite isn't the type of game you would enjoy, please do not try to change it into something you will enjoy, because there are a lot of people that enjoy it as is, with all its flaws and bugs, because it is not a perfect game, but it is, at least in my eyes, better then the majority of games out there, and even with my time table, I keep coming back, and I do not mind one bit that things that time and effort, it makes them feel worth it, where the ton of games out there that give you everything are boring and dull.
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Interestingly, that game is about to go free to play - for one level of access at least.
Eve has gone free to play, because of low player numbers and such, and artificially inflated player numbers, by a large majority of the users having multiple account, random reports, that I have no clue is valid or not, put the actual amount of people playing the game at a fifth of what the numbers say.
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In the 34th century ships' computers don't have the memory of a 1990's scientific calculator to store the trade prices for visited stations, apparently. The reason for this? "It would make trading too easy" if pricelists were stored. A dev said that, way back in the day. (Source now untraceable.)
Uh...they store it just fine? you just go there, and you get it? it invalidates itself after 24 hours, because the market changes, so.....