When Guardian content was first introduced you needed 25 blueprints to unlock one module, and there are still only ~5 distinct sites that produce module blueprints. The designers who implemented these unlock goals did so knowing full well that players would need to reset instances one way or another. Frontier isn't coy about implementing one-dimensional time-gates to content, presumably they do it to increase player retention as some Important Metrics show that people are more likely to stop playing once they've unlocked everything.
While it's true that guides are exacerbating the situation in some cases (you don't need a guide to work out it's less faff to attack anarchy settlements) it's genuinely fascinating to see more ire in this thread for random youtube nerds than for the game developers who're directly responsible for this release, and more broadly for player engagement. Sorry guys, I know this is a contentious topic and some people are extremely proud of their capacity to avoid grindy patterns, but the buck stops with the developers. If large numbers of players aren't engaging with your game as intended then something went wrong at a design level - this isn't some radical opinion I'm pushing here, this is accepted truth in the field.
It's not newsworthy that some people like to find exploits and loopholes, just look at the speedrunning community - this can even be a positive thing if it's contained. The difference is, say, exploiting an error with collision detection to bypass an entire segment of a linear level in DOOM is not something that appeals to a broad audience. Even knowing that it's possible most people will choose to play the whole level from start to finish. If vast swathes of players are doing the equivalent of this in Elite then maybe, just maybe, gating Bill Tachyon behind 500 copies of Viz, spawning at a rate of 0.005% in your momma's footlocker, is not a particularly great piece of design.
To bring this post back on topic, surely a better means of player retention in the long-term would be to support the core communities who cling like beleaguered limpets to this game's actually decent, endlessly repeatable and unique mechanics like the BGS, Powerplay, Racing and PvP. Again, I'm astonished that people can muster more outrage toward an individual like D2EA than they can for the thread topic which is that a subsection of the community is currently being eradicated by what amounts to a negligent beta release.
If steam charts are anything to go by player numbers are now the lowest they've been since last August which to me implies that there's a limit to how much engagement you can get out of 40 Opinion Polls et al. As I've said a few times in this thread already, I actually like a lot of Odyssey's content and think there are plenty of things for devs to be proud of, but the release state and the catastrophic effects it's had on our group makes it nigh-impossible for us to be positive about it. Collectively our will to even boot the game up at this point is being severely challenged and, surprisingly enough, the first person I choose to blame for this is not Johnny Content Creator.
![[PS4] Filthymick420](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/201/201444.jpg?1555738739){kind=avatar}
) to really make these places the 'go to'.
