It all comes from the fact that the developers simply gave up on the game FOR YEARS. The strongest side of the game is (wow, surprise) - space, they gave up on space and everything connected with it. There are no accretion disks, no new types of planetary bodies, no improvements to the old ones, I won't even mention new types of landing planets, no new xenobiology, no addition to exploration gameplay, no changes to the balance, name it and it turns out that it hasn't been added/improved/received any attention for YEARS.
The next strong side of the game is variability. You can potentially be a bounty hunter, a trader, etc, etc. In fact, half of it doesn't work or doesn't work as it should (hello, piracy!). A complete lack of creativity in the gameplay or new, truly diverse features that complement the gameplay. Everything is covered up with colossal amounts of grind and presented as an 'awesome' (I swear, this word has been making me cringe since 2016) feature. You can see this in the colonization example, construction is a page of lines of code written in a week/two/month, which simply makes it possible to transport "goods" to new 3D model, which basically same station and nothing more. No variety, no creativity, no used features ALL of old features, no new POI's, no exceptional colonisation status for missions, no missions. Just nothing. Doesn't even reach their standard "minimum finished product" at this stage. The colonization itself, outside of construction, is extremely unfinished, but in its general essence it represents the basic essence of tycoons from 25 years ago. The fact that it arouses some interest is not connected with the colonization itself, but with what Elite is in principle.
The third side of Elite is immersion. God, Elite has always been an incredibly immersive game. This was expressed in everything - from banal skyboxes, to customization of your COVAS voice, BGS, Newtonian physics, ship design, stations - you name it, LORE, galnet, it was really well written hardcore sci-fi at "design level". They stopped working on immersion almost completely. (Moreover, they went to the completely opposite part, but this is a topic for a separate conversation). Interaction with the world is stuck in 2016, we have no on-foot interactions, we still have catastrophically little new or improved interactions in ship mode, except that everything is expressed simply in text boxes, and even text boxes have not been added for years. Why do TOP 1% LINERS continue to appear for years? (beyond the point that it's already a meme?) There is no new work on the BGS at the level of depth, not width, no new POIs, no new NPC lines (is it really that hard to write even a few pages of new text lines?), we can't drink at the bar, the monitors in settlements and on carriers reflect the same texture + animations that means nothing and give no information at all, the nebula lighting was kinda destroyed, the crew is simply useless and does not even have a visual display in the next chair. Where the game needs danger there is none, remember the AI NPCs after horizons that REALLY represented a danger and were not just models for your corvette to grind? Nerfed, to please those who didn't even want to try to delve into the mechanics and improve their skill. Black holes pose a threat? Please, they are the safest thing in space. They add potential MMO elements, but the game doesn't even have the foundation for an MMO component (which Vanguards should potentially be to some extent). And the mention of ship interiors causes so much controversy that the amount of energy released is the equivalent of a supernova. The funniest thing is that most of the little things, really immersive little things, don't require a year's work and a team of five hundred people. Many things are ridiculously easy to implement, they just weren't done and aren't being done because they didn't care after the golden goose in the person of Elite essentially raised the company.
Due to a series of horribly bad decisions and in pursuit of easy profit - Elite's golden years have passed, its potential was wasted and it will never be the same or the game and franchise that it really could have become. Not the least role in this was played by people who justify ANY disgusting decision and disrespect for themselves as a player and part of the community.
Now, when FDev was almost bankrupt and are going to milk the game again, the same thing is happening because the content hungry players were given some good PATCHES (not updates, whatever they call it!) with the basic minimum, but the overall concept has not changed. It is maximum profit, with minimum effort. Elite will never be the same, but whether it will remain a good game now more than ever depends on whether (unless FD goes almost bankrupt again) the community will accept these bad decisions, vote for them with money and allow themselves to be spitting in the face (like for example, the lack of critical information for a live "beta test", when you are essentially used as free QA, which would be bearable if after hundreds of hours spent, the players' efforts did not turn into nothing with this biowaste situations, this is far from the first case, remember the Thargoid war and the tweaking of numbers). If so, the entire franchise will soon have no future, even if they release interiors + landing planets tomorrow, in the same minimum finished product. I don't want to offend the developers or anything like that, but this is just the pure truth and facts especially considering what's happening to the industry right now.
