It's the opposite. The new mechanic has no upside, but two downsides: it adds grind and tedium due to the speed limit and removes the fun of ramming ships. Which isn't a problem, since you are usually not affected by that if everyone stays in solo mode. And for PvP mode - the people consent to being subjected to other people's actions.
I think this is actually an interesting statement as it cuts to the heart of the problem here: there are two camps of players coming to ED and they understand the gameplay in different ways.
ED is a game in the "open world" tradition, which Braben and Bell pretty much invented. These are effectively "real life" simulators: you work for a living and you exist in a universe of people doing the same; the fun comes in the work and the environment being so different from actual "real life". In open world games, death varies between expensive to terminal. There are, however, a large contingent of players who have come to Elite from a completely different tradition of gaming, and that's the first-person PvP tradition of games. In these games, death is cheap and very much part of the fun.
I'm not saying either camp is "right" -- there is no such thing -- but they obviously have different expectations. The problem appears to be that the PvP camp believe that "open" is their mode and that "solo" is the mode for the open world players. Unfortunately, this isn't actually how most open world players want to play; to them, open just means they can play the same way, but *with other people*.
FD are trying to walk the difficult line of pleasing both camps as much as they can, but it is still very much an open world game. They could have very easily just enforced the speed limit with some kind of NFZ "ship control field" that actually stops you from speeding, and therefore made the stations basically PvP lobbies. Instead they have chosen the proper open world approach of making it a responsibility and consequence thing, like in real life: you can speed, but you take a risk doing so.
I'll put my hand up and say that I'm an open world player -- I played the original Elite as a teenager, so I'm in the quite large camp of old school open world players of ED. I play in open all of the time. I do so in full understanding of the risks that entails, but that does not mean I "consent" to being rammed. Just as when I get on my motorbike and ride on the streets I understand that I could be rammed and killed, but I do not "consent" to it; I expect that the rules of the road and the consequences of breaking them will make the risk an acceptable one for the benefit of being able to go somewhere.
PvP players are going to have to come to terms with the kind of game that ED is and is very likely going to remain -- open world -- because that's the kind of games that Braben wants to make. I think it is still possible to have fun in that kind of game as a PvP player, I just think you need to be more creative in how you play and see it as more of a challenge.
You can *choose* to live life as a criminal in ED, and I think that's an fascinating idea, but -- like a criminal in the real world -- you have to live with the consequences of that choice: ram away, but accept that you will pick up fines and bounties; you'll need to move from station to station to evade being destroyed and one day a bounty hunter may come after you. See that as adding interest to your game rather than ruining it.
