TBH, if you have been on this ride since Beta (why did you jump on so late?), you should be at least somewhat worried. I don't have a problem with the vision, though I understand that some do. FD have always said this is a one-man-in-a-ship game, not one with guilds, and user owned spaceports and all that stuff. Anyone who wants all that stuff, is going to be very disappointed.
Anyway, the vision is great, IMHO, (YMMV). But the speed of delivery is painfully slow. And the quality is patchy. Great visuals, wonderful sounds, placeholder stuff to do everywhere. At the speed new stuff is appearing, I will be dead long before they are anywhere near delivering the vision outlined in the DDA. And new stuff will only appear whilst they are getting the revenue to justify the cost of delivering it - FD are a company around to make money, and new people will only sign up if what they see is good enough for them (assuming they do any research). So I have to be worried about the medium and long term future, because we do not know how it will all pan out.
Well this is the most sane comment I've seen so far in this 'thread', and the one I most agree with. I worry that Frontier have shot themselves in the foot here, by not giving the game another six months to a year to develop. And it's not as if that is hindsight - it was being said back in Alpha/Premium Beta when speculation about release around the 30th anniversary was running rife.
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To complain that Elite is shallow, consists of doing the same repetitive missions, the universe is empty and consists of the same coloured balls over and over again is a valid argument. However, the same criticisms have been levelled at the three previous Elite games and they were all moderately popular, well loved (sequels less so than the original) and (at least partially) convinced people to back this iteration. So why are people surprised over more of the same? Yes, the depth of the missions could be a lot greater, and I'm not too convinced that Frontier's attempts to corral players into providing their own content based on the current flawed mission system will work, but the core content of all of the Elites has been space trucking and the 'grind', with mining, bounty hunting, piracy, whatever, secondary. <Shrug!> Unfortunately, complex missions may never appear, especially as the p2p matchmaking in the game can't really guarantee that a) we are able follow targets with impunity through multiple mission stages and multiple systems without a glitch, or b) keep groups of players in the same instances (yet?).
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So, in the absence of decent missions, what can be done? Personally, I think making Anarchies a lot more dangerous, but certain goods more lucrative, interdictions less escapable, police less capable in scanning to improve smuggling, rebalancing low level fines (should not result in a death sentence) vs. fines for murder (definitely should), separating solo online and open characters completely, and either rebalancing ship costs to bring the high end down (under the assumption that people are going to lose a lot more through ship and cargo destruction overall) would go a long way to renew flagging interest for a lot of people. Now someone's going to come in and say 'you're just after forcing pvp on people', 'don't make me play the game your way' and 'traders will just flee to solo' - well yes, I am. I've completely changed my opinion since backing the game for single player only. Heck, I'm coming dangerously close to believing that, for the game to succeed in the end, private groups need removing and everyone should be forced into open, to level the playing field, stop diluting dev effort, and get everyone back on the same page (sorry people with bad internet connections - don't mean to penalise you - but...) As the AI aren't cutting it, I think we need the danger back.
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<Points at the original games> They were difficult, traders had a hard time in anarchies, some fights were unwinnable (without save scumming or glitching stardreamer) - can we have that back in this iteration please?
