Yes, all of the above. They made the game more grindy and slower. don't play this game if you want to play other games and have a life and a job. I'm not happy with the update. You have to power your farms with isotopes now, every single planter has to be powered and recharged. Expect 20 hours of gameplay to get that new ship. How the fuck is this improvement? Add endgame, don't just stretch out what you already have, I don't see how adding tedium improves the game.... This sucks, I was so stoked for this update.
I think I'm still net positive... the new biomes are pretty nice.
I found a desert planet that has this canyon rivers (well, idle bodies of whatever but they look like canyon rivers) and the sexy new higher LOD cactuses... Gave me quite the pause.
And I think the new Star System Economies has a lot of potential. There are so many types... Mining, Ore Extracting, Ore Processing, Prospecting, Metal Processing, etc (just the ones related to 'mining' that I've seen). And there's so many new Economies trade items... I had a ship full of like 5-6 different types of new items designed for 'Trading' economies. So, kinda cool from a loop or gameplay POV; just hope it doesn't make cash even slower than before.
Not sure about the new missions yet. Similar to Freighters, mostly just seem like window dressing for previous gameplay loops. E.g. freighters are basically just art set pieces with some vaults to dig up; the missions I've done are all just basic actions from before (e.g. fly to X trade network pod to drop off item and return to space station).
But variety does help the loop. Kinda simple/boring to do 10-20 times but adding in 1-2 missions every 5 hours does help break up and add variety to the gameplay loot, so while I'm not sure they're going to be a main activity I do, doing a few here and there could be nice variety.
Looking forward to building a gas mining unit too still haha. I mean, I'm sure it'll be no different than an AMU but still kinda nice we're getting some variety for roleplay flavour.
So, mostly net positive I think... hopefully the bugs get ironed out and all the needless new sinks are balanced by better rewards. Kinda sad they went and reset all my favorite planets, too -- I spent probably over 100 hours choosing my 3-4 favorites and build up my bases, mining waypoints, etc lol
lost so much roleplay/base building attachment. Helps though that the new desert biomes are gorgeous, and the home planet I always had hoped to find (sandy desert with better canyons and plains) is probably now in the game somewhere.
