it likely just means we'll basically be doing the same thing that has already been done in Lugh, Mikuun etc. That is grinding missions until a quota is met, but with nothing really changing. A faction getting a capital ships impacts the game very little, amounting to a random % chance that it will jump into a conflict zone and look intimidating. Beyond that, the capital ships don't really do anything, so why should players be working towards this goal if nothing interesting will happen? Since factions don't seem to have any resources/autonomy of their own, the results will always be predictable and boring. The entire background simulation is anemic to the point of being practically fictional at this point, since seemingly everything is done by Frontier manually, such as spawning ships, expanding into unexplored territory, wars, etc.
The game suffers from an identity crisis, resulting in a bizarrely curated Frankengame. The pitch was a sandbox but lacks the reactive environment that allows for player creativity which makes sandboxes worthwhile. A sandbox without sand. Okay. So what can we do? Grind. Grind cookie cutter missions, cookie cutter bounties, or cookie cutter trade routes for cookie cutter rewards and cookie cutter +/- 0.0000001 faction influence that has the cookie cutter result of spawning cookie cutter conflict zones until red is green or blue is yellow. And once red is green, or blue is yellow? Nothing. I guess you could do it again. But the sad truth of the matter appears to be that there is just no A.I beyond basic combat routines and them pretending that they're doing something (when in reality, a lot of the time they just fly around aimlessly and then jump out/sit still doing literally nothing), and the only way that the galaxy can change beyond basic color swaps and cookie cutter missions is that Frontier has to manually do it. And with that, the sandbox is approach is effectively neutered. The moment to moment gameplay? Meaningless. All that matters is that at the end, Frontier racks up a tally and implements a predictable result, where nothing unexpected, new, or creative could happen.
Take the planned method for human space expanding for example
One of the other community goals will be a more involved process enabling the expansion into an unpopulated system. This will be a three stage process. The first step is for us and the DDF to establish a short list of candidate systems. The aim for this initial colony is to support further exploration and to act as a hub for other expansion in the region. Once we have the shortlist players will be invited to map the candidate systems and whichever system has the most data about it sold will be the target system. A community goal will then start to gather the resources needed to build an Ocellus starport that will be deployed in the chosen star system.
I don't want to participate in expanding into unpopulated systems like you describe it, Frontier. An arbitrary list compiled completely outside of the actual game, which Frontier will then instruct us to grind exploration data on, taking the tally and making the system that received the most grind the next to be colonized. This entire method has no gameplay value, and boils down to casting a vote. it could be done entirely without the game by doing just that, and opening a poll on the forums. Unfortunately, Frontier doesn't seem interested in developing the sterile, static, and superficial background simulation that seems less and less relevant in favor of Frontier curating every event in the game. it's like playing a game of D&D in group of 300 thousand other players, with a GM that presents you with a handful of predetermined actions with predetermined results, and has the 300 thousand cast a vote to choose both action and result in one fell swoop.
And really, I'm starting to wonder, why is this game even multiplayer? They have had to sacrifice so much because of the multiplayer and have gained so little.
They wanted this to be an MMO, but they didn't want to spend the money on servers. No servers and p2p matchmaking cripples the capability of what they can do. Want to prevent people from alt-f4ing? You can't, because it being p2p means that there is no server to track them and keep their character in the game world for 15 seconds to prevent combat logging. Want to have any sort of sophisticated A.I that is capable of pursuing its own objectives? Nope, no server to track that kind of behavior, instead we can only have a selection of randomly spawning events with randomly spawning npcs that appear out of nowhere, like how there's pirates hundreds of ly away in a system that only has a blackhole, saying the same tired selection of one liners that make no sense in context of what is happening, and where.
And what do we get in return? Grinding, with friends. Like killing trash mobs over and over again with a buddy on WoW. And we get meaningless flavor text updated every few days that describes conflicts that simply don't exist in game. The instancing, p2p, low bandwidth requirements, and the purely curated approach have neutered the game to the point where it still lacks a lot of the complexity that was present in FE2, FFE, Oolite etc. So what's up next? Wings? Doesn't address the core issue, only lets you experience it with friends. Planets and FPS? it will be flashy, but it will only allow us to experience a meaningless grind from a different point of view. Then we can kill 7 boars instead of 7 pirates for eternity. I just don't know anymore. The expansions and all the updates planned so far seem to be slated to add more flash, but little substance.
