Got to agree. Don't get me wrong, fantastic foundation in terms of mechanics- the pew pew mostly, as mining could use, I think, some tweaking to make it a little less about Cargo Scooping Foreva!- and a great big universe that could be the setting for some pretty grand and awesome stuff. And I'm not even going to try claiming such awesome things aren't coming, as even if I do stop playing, I'll still be keeping an eye on updates and expansions, and will probably jump right back in. But as things stand, there's a fair bit that needs to be done to flesh things out, and if this product was the 'Finished Game' without further development in the works, I wouldn't be remotely satisfied. But again, I know things will improve, so I'm far more philosophical about it. ^_^
But part of the issue, for me, is it seems to be kind of a Jack of All Trades, without having much focus. It seems to have taken a route that more multiplayer focused games do; it has a big, big universe, but the lore beneath this iteration is paper thin, stripping it from really having 'A Living Galaxy' because what you're mostly seeing is spreadsheet economics (when it works) and some occasional news stories about some event occurring that might or might not actually be happening by the time you get there. Now, normally the idea is 'Make Your Own Fun,' and multiplayer is usually a quick and effective way to do that, but the multiplayer is peer to peer and capped, so even the most populated battles are still going to be only a few dozen people, along with all the other problems P2P can cause. Until the Wings mechanic is released (assuming it's spot-on, of course, and doesn't need further development itself,) it isn't really a 'Multiplayer Game' just 'A Game That Has Some Multiplayer Features.' Which is kind of irritating given it has the same reliance on servers to function even on a basic level that fully-focused Multiplayer games do. Its flying and fighting mechanics are highly enjoyable, but it largely seems to boil down to either blowing up NPCs or Players for profit, (pirating, bounty hunting, conflict zones,) or just to make them go 'boom.' The only real thing at risk is your collection of credits, due to insurance rebuy cost, and even an Ironman mode still boils down to just losing all your stuff; there's no grander goal, no sense of 'Losing the battle, but winning the war' or vice versa.
What we need, I think, is an Enemy. Something distinct from human factions, that can't be joined by players, a faction or race (Thargoids?) who occupy a territory as vast and unyielding as the human occupied stars, and whose home is distant from ours. (I'm thinking at least a thousand light years, with the space between both humans and this other faction comprising a sort of 'Neutral' or 'Contested' zone littered with empty or scarcely inhabited worlds.) A foe who sends raiding parties into human worlds from their stronghold systems. The stronghold systems themselves would be populated by the sort of ships you would expect to support a spacefaring civilization, only essentially everything in those systems wants to kill you, just because you're their central foe. High risk, high reward, honor and glory, and with Wings mechanics, we can form raiding parties and band together to either defend human colonies, or strike back at the foe. Form propaganda pieces decrying our hated foes, and lauding players who have performed exceedingly well in destroying the scum, etc, etc.
In short, we need a common enemy. All the Empire vs. Federation stuff just kind of looks like infighting and squabbling between kissing cousins. xP
Heck, this could be something in development for all I know. ^^ I just think that the game has the potential to be an Epic Space Poem, The Iliad with missile launchers, it just needs a little more, well, epicness.
I'll come back to it in 6 months. But I'm glad I've given Frontier some money. Hopefully they keep hand-crafting a lot of elements and deliver something astonishing. The game has a LOT of potential.
