I knew when they released it for consoles it was the beginning of the end of what I liked about this game. Sure enough, after a couple years most "improvements" have been driving me further away.
-Engineering power creep with very few drawbacks and titanic benefits.
-profit creep to cater to instant gratification
-Telepresence to explain why your crew survives instead of just using the same magic you do when you survive. Losing cool points for no reason.
-Invincible shields force narrow metas for PvP where you're specifically designed to take out shields or you dogfight for 40 minutes
-no NPC multicrew (and the empty seats that go with it)
-arbitrary material limits (no gold in the sulphur box!) instead of increasing the overall limit
-"we don't want players doing this or that so we don't want a player economy etc." (or even the illusion of a dynamic economy)
-no point in trading when trade missions pay 8m+ (20x what the cargo is worth!) you have to do it for "fun" instead of a means of income
-ATR with their patronizing weapons instead of sending adequate numbers. Another result of the ridiculously overpowered shields
They keep giving up more and more on the sim aspect I enjoyed so much about it and just shrug at the magic creeping into it. It used to care more about explaining where this ton of stuff is. Now it just goes in the TARDIS bag.
What hurts the most is that they (game developers in general) will never get as close to making the game I always wanted as this game was when it was first released, bugs and all. Foreboding, difficult and unknown. The direction they were taking it up to Horizons had me transfixed. The planetary landings made the galaxy waaaay bigger. The direction got my hopes up.
Then engineers. Then console crowd. Then "why try to be realistic, we have FSD and shields, after all. No need to explain that." and the slippery slope fallacy isn't so fallacious in retrospect. The likely patterns emerged.
By the time they have atmospheric landings and space legs I wonder what else I love about this game will be deemed too difficult or not necessary.
There's only one elite and you have to be vocal about it to try and steer it in the direction you want, for your part. I don't begrudge people wanting to change this game into something I roll my eyes at. They have to vocalize what they want. It just sucks being on the losing team, that's all. The silent majority have spoken with their money.
I wish they could clone it and take one back to the old earnings and change engineers to have serious drawbacks to overspecialization and diminishing returns. I'd like to see jump ranges nerfed across the board. After all, we have jumponium and neutron boosts. Would be nice but will never happen.
I can see where you're coming from... I 100% agree with you WRT credits. The whole game progression is broken.. Day 1 Cobra, Day 3 Asp, Day 5 Python. Day 7 Anaconda (Assuming no ...ahem... FDEV brainfarts, in which case, one day is often enough to get you to an Annie.)
Generally, I enjoy the engineers, but as you said, their benefits are too big, IMO and not outweighed by negatives. They should be unreliable and break down, or have some drawbacks that make them a strategic choice, not a necessity. <--- This is my key gripe.
And the way they implemented max speed (keep requiring boost to travel in a straight line) does my head in.... The idea that I have to boost repeatedly down towards a planet's surface is something I've never been able to understand...
I can understand why they wanted to remove newtonian flight (I didn't enjoy Frontier's combat) but surely they could have come up with a better boost mechanic, like, once you're at max speed you'll stay there unless you try to turn... or something... or anything to make it less arcady.
The whole Free-to-play/arcadification is very sad... To see the game outdone in gameplay mechanics and game loops by an essentially free to play or ¥300 (with in game expansions) Galaxy on Fire HD dated 2014 is really sad.
In GoF, you stole/pirated/bought your blueprints for exotic equipment, collected the requisite materials and credits, chose a suitable location and started production. You could even store materials on site and send materials later (for a cost) if you were short... once production started, you could keep track of progress and either time your arrival at the production facility to coincide with the component's completion or have it shipped to you (for a cost).
This was SOOOO much more believable than the JoooooooooBwaaaah. Grade 1 JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. Grade 2 JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. Grade 3. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. Grade 4.
JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. JoooooooBwaaaah. Grade 5 - maxed. 160,000,000 Credit, 80T module updated in 2 minutes.
Followed by an insipid "I'm pleased with the way things turned out" cut and paste NPC comment.
The whole instant gratification is just galling after such a good start to the game.
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