Funny that for years people were doomsaying "maintenance mode" and people were saying, rubbish, stop exaggerating.
Now, we're all cheering on maintenance mode "yes, we don't want new stuff, we just want bugs fixed, let it take as long as it takes."
The sad truth is, nothing completely new has been added since the middle of 2016.
2017 brought "the return", thargoids, the rest of the year was "planning and bug fixing".
2018 brought Beyond, a rework of core mechanics. No new content as such, just better versions of what we had, and bug fixes.
2019 and 2020 were going to be small updates, and bug fixing.
We are in a constant loop of bug fixing, have been for years. The issue is, that some old bugs never went away, and with each small update, new bugs appear.
The reason Fleet carriers seemed a big deal, is that it was the first entirely new gameplay addition since the introduction of ship launched fighters in 2016. You could argue that Thargoids in 2017 was new, but that had been ongoing since 2015 and really it was another USS hunt with a bigger, harder NPC that you fight (plus i'll never recover from the loss of all the science and mystery that existed before they became a big bug hunt game).
This might go all the way back to the time when Horizons was first launched. Remember, ED didn't smash it's kickstarter, there were times it looked a bit shaky. Sales were decent but not massive after it was released. When Horizons first appeared it was at a premium cost, that had to be reduced fairly quickly before people jumped in a bought it in any great numbers. I would guess, that this loss of income is the reason it took two years to complete rather than one (half the income half the resource). It also probably explains why some decisions were made to cut corners to be able to meet the promises that were made. There might even have been a feeling that the project was basically done at that point and new income from elsewhere was needed, so it didn't matter how features were implemented, just get them in there under budget.
The interesting thing though was that sales kept going, horizons sales took off and then the console ports happened. People bought a lot of cosmetics and the community kept growing so it was a money maker in the long run.
This creates a problem, it would be madness to just cut off that income stream, so development has to keep happening, but now you have to deal with adding things to a code base that may have been a series of sticking plasters to keep it running short term, and any big changes mean that you have to almost go back to the start and rewrite it completely.
I am guessing that this is the 2020 plan. It's a ground up rewrite. The part finished projects that were whispered about in the past can't be added to the existing code as it would fall over completely, so they got dusted off, updated and written to fit in with this entirely new version of the game.
There are a load of things that "almost" made it, proper damage models, visible ship interiors (remember the half destroyed Anaconda floating in space with cargo spilling out of the cargo racks), comets, dredgers, ice planets, big planetary features, fleet carriers, multicrew (joking, joking).
This makes a lot of sense. It also explains why everything new has to basically reuse mechanics that already exist.
I would say that if this is the case, then the developers have actually done an amazing job, they have had to be creative to keep finding new ways to use the same assets, shoehorn new things in that don't upset the shaky base code and still keep it all hanging together. It must be disheartening for them to know they are doing the best with what they have available but they know that they're severely limited and us lot are biting at them for all the proposed features that were spoken about in the beginning (atmospheric landing, EVA repairs, ship boarding, hunting things on planets, space legs, etc etc).
The good news is that there is probably a lot of work in progress things that can be added to this new version of the game. That means that the work didn't go to waste.
The bad news, well, two years isn't actually that long to totally rewrite the game, and we really shouldn't expect to see anything in the meantime.
The danger is that people just walk away from the game completely and lose faith, so they have the risk that even if they pull off a miracle, not enough people will be prepared to come back and pony up the money, and player drop off over the two quiet years hurts their potential to make any return on the effort required.
I'm betting that ARX was a way to mitigate that risk, that's why it had to be added when it was. If enough people "invest" in ARX and start to build a cash reserve, then it covers the costs until they can get income from the big update. For FDEV, ARX is almost like money in the bank. The old way of "buying as and when" isn't as reliable as people pre purchasing "credits" and it looks good to the investors.
So, i'm going to give them another chance. I'm going to buy more ARX, i'll keep playing the game (though a lot less, there isn't really anything else left for me to do at the moment). I'll buy the next update no matter what. What Fdev need to do short term is put a small team to task on just story telling, creating events, little things that create excitement. Could be as silly as unlocking a few permit locked sectors and hiding some new assets to find or missions to recover lost objects, or throw in some science puzzles. This is a good time to get those rumours in full swing
I'm sure they could hand place a few more things around the galaxy, maybe bases built by generation ships that crashed onto planets, who knows
