I backed ED from early alpha and at first the combat was pure and simple: Surprise your opponet, outfly your opponent, not get hit and hit hard when you get the chance. It felt like it was down to skill and you could even take out a Python in a Cobra MkIII by using hit and run tactics.
Then ED started adding in more and ore crap I don't recall anyone asking for. Engineers just ruined the combat for me because I absolutely detest excessive grind to win. Shield boosts and engineer powerups etc just absolutely ruined combat even against the NPC.
So the last time I loaded this piece of crap onto my PC I headed to a combat zone and got ganked in seconds by a Viper MkIII. My weapons barely even dented his shields. I know people say get a bigger ship or upgrade using Engineers but when I tried that RNG nonsense I literally had a sore head with hours of boredom. There is also the problem I am not interested in anything of the medium or larger ships.
Years ago the devs decided grind = gameplay = fun and that everyone's sole aim was to get bigger and bigger ships. This games does not cater AT ALL for people who are happy to fly around in solo against NPCs in a small ship like a Cobra MK III and who have no interest in grinding for upgrades.
I still have the ED beta backer pack with all the crap I will never care about.
I haven't been playing it long, but i enjoyed it when it was just Horizons, up to a point, because its
effectively a solo play game, as in instancing with one or a couple of others and becoming a disembodied camera attached to their ship really is not MP game play no matter how much you close your eyes and try to believe in it.
So once you got a few hours in the game play loops most of it just becomes rinse and repeat.
That's not a fault in the game, most games end up being that eventually, once you have enough hours in them.
There was a hope that Odyssey was going to be something more, i'm not intelligent enough to explain it properly but you feel a little trapped in Horizons, you're trapped in your ship, you're trapped on the rails that its gameplay loops take you down, even the super cruse element of ED just gived it that feeling of it being on rails and of course you can't just drop out and go land on any random planet you see on your way past without changing rail track or if at all because not everything is there to be landed on. and if you mate is over there you can't just plunk your ship next to his get out and say hello, or just walk on to his ship with him, get in his turret...
Its a great game but it all feels a bit rigid and lonely.
So space legs was one critical element to give you more freedom, ship interiors and EVA were the other elements to make it a much more open world game, i've said it before and i'll say it again, its ship interiors, EVA, space legs is why Star Citizen is still going as a perpetual broken alpha, its not because it looks amazing its because its true open world.
Odyssey comes out, no ship interiors, no EVA, nothing at all to open it up, basically Horizons with legs, Braben says none of that its all boring.
sigh
As if that was not enough to ruin it they turn everything people hated the most about Horizons to 11, so you want to do this or that?.... no you can't first you have to do this, over and over again, and once you've spent 40 hours in a ground hog nightmare we are going to spring another level of repetitive grind on you, only then can you do what you wanted to do a couple of months ago, and everything that you want to do we will make you jump though our agonising grind hoops first.
I'm going to say the reason i was ganked by the NPC's as i was just looking for a bit of fun is because something in the level of my account told the code i was not supposed to be there, i don't know, maybe i was not supposed to be earning this much combat XP at this point?
Katie, quite a well known name in ED, she moved to SC after EDO, she explained why in the clear and balanced way only she can, i posted it on the ED forums pleading for FDev to listen to it, it took less than an hour and the video was yeeted right out my post by the mods.
And this is it.... time stamped URL, just click and play.
https://youtu.be/90MWpcb7Wpg?t=4414