This game would benefit so much by having even some rudimentary systems in place, working and giving you fair rewards. But that's what it needs the most - simulated systems, emergent gameplay, that sense of mystery and exploration.
Now, "improving the central story" might actually mean plenty of things, like actually adding or fleshing out existing systems so that the "central story" revolves around new/better ways of making money, doing missions, having greater/any impact on NPCs/factions and having better tools for exploration, all for the purpose of doing whatever is necessary to finish this new questline. How it's worded though, sounds like it might be much more similar to the "builders questlines", which is probably more realistic (and disappointing). One thing to add to that though is that I don't really think we'll just get a new rudimentary story without adding some new gameplay elements, because the two previous updates took a few months as well and added a bunch of other content as well, so there's something to be hopeful in there.
Same thing with the portals, the wording in the email sounds like they're just the teleporters we have on space stations, but on ground, which is beyond pointless. So at the very least I'm sure we'll get a way of learning the new glyphs/language, and then having at least some other purpose for activating those portals apart from a quick travel reason which, again, is completely pointless, because traveling to anywhere in this game has almost no incentive, because anywhere is just like anywhere else and there's almost no uniqueness to planets (in terms of gameplay incentives).
This used to be so much worse before the big patches, because I could basically upgrade a third of my suit's slots, learn maybe a tenth of a language and get a pretty considerable chunk of blueprints on a single planet. And the most drastic changes they've done to alleviate that problem is to drastically reduce the occurrence of those elements, so basically making it more grindy by relying on randomization even more.
Anyway, I'm sure there's more good stuff in the patch, and it's commendable that they've been supporting the game for free for a year now, but I can't imagine them doing it for free for much longer, because whatever the public may think of them, they're still game developers bleeding money. And if they keep adding more filler material (with some neat cool stuff inbetween) without fundamentally improving the core systems, I can't really see people giving them money for any larger future updates either (not to mention the whole public image thing either).
I'm sure I'll play through whatever they've added in this update, but I'm not hoping for too much. At least I'll either be alright with whatever's in there, or be pleasantly surprised if there are fundamental gameplay improvements.
