Ok. Here is a long post I just posted on one of those Reddit threads (deleted in an hour probably):
The problem is that I paid for the original vision, but I got more than I bargained for. If we take the car metaphor further: imagine that you paid for a concept car, lets say the Tesla model X, which we can imagine was crowd funded by customers sharing the "vision" of the creators. They were promised a sports utility vehicle that has all the modern facilities you could expect from a modern car at this price range.
However, as money started rolling in big time, instead of speeding up the development and focusing all the efforts on finishing the car, then thinking about developing new cars, they decided that the model X, although not realistically achievable within any given time schedules, should be capable of atmospheric flight. Of course this represented a whole set of new problems for the developers, as no one had done anything similar before, but they were dead set on making the car. If this meant that the car, which was promised to be launching the middle of next year, would be delayed with another year, so be it. To actually be able to finance the car, they started to sell new concepts of cars which also included new areas of usage, which meant that they suddenly had to spread their efforts even further and begin working on these new concepts to keep the new customers satisfied.
Even more money started rolling in, and Tesla decided: "nah, this isnt perfect enough, we need the model x to be able to break out of the atmosphere and land on the moon". This meant that they had to change the entire engine instead of simply modifying it, which meant that they had to go back to the drawing board once again and redesign essential parts of it, while also including atmospheric shielding to make it possible to re-enter the atmosphere upon returning. Time schedules were further skewed and promises again were not kept. As they realized that this started to become a trend, Tesla suddenly decided that the best strategy at this point were to simply stop promising things.
The original backers which simply wanted a nice car to get to work, the supermarket or their woodland cabins started wondering what was happening. What would come next? That the car, which basically still was a rough model you could sit inside of to get the feel of it, was to be able to reach Mars instead of simply the moon? The backers knew that since the car werent even be able to drive around properly yet, much less to achieve atmospheric flight, so a lot of them started reconsidering if they wanted to gamble on the car even leaving the concept stage, with so much of their hard earned money invested into this project. The new promised concept cars seemed even further away. Backers started pulling out and demanded refunds, which in turn required Tesla to come up with ways to keep the funding going. They then returned to what had worked so well before; to sell even more concepts, while the backers who paid for the original concept of a road vehicle had nothing substantial to show for. What they do get is a pre-alpha model they can take home, but they can only drive around in their driveways for now, due to a lot of technical problems. Tesla again says; it takes as long as it takes, prompting even more people stop believing in the ever expanding vision of the heads of Tesla. Instead of having this second rate car standing around in their garage doing nothing, they decide that enough is enough.
This is honestly how I feel about this whole thing. I backed before there even was planned a fps aspect in the game, and already at the time this was introduced I was somewhat skeptical. I decided to back SC because it was supposed to be a spiritual sequel to the Wing Commander series, which I loved so much back in the day, and that in a big way. I spent exactly $1000 buying several interesting ships, which seem to now drown in the huge amount of new concepts, simply based on the fact that I wanted a great space simulator, not a life simulator. I do however love the "idea" of being able to land and exit a space craft, but not if this detracts from the initial core concept of the game. A glorious space sim needs to have a lot of available systems and sectors to interesting, but at this rate we will sadly have only two or three "finished" systems two years from now.
That said; of course this is a voluntary endeavor, and no one is forcing anyone into something, and in my case I just sold off everything except from a core package of around 70 dollars (which includes SQ42). I think I will keep this one, but no way if I am putting more money into this as long as 3.0 is the best they can come up with.
