I've recently came back to the game after a short break caused by the state of the 4.0 release and I can safely say my time has been way better compared to that.
I haven't done much for now - mostly cargo and a few bunker missions. Both worked pretty well for the most part (except for a few hostile NPCs being stuck in spawn closets every single time). No medical since this part of the game seems pretty dead right now. Oh well, maybe I'll get lucky again some day.
I dropped into Pyro for a looksie as well. Unfortunately my PC had a bit of a rough time with locations there - not to unplayable levels but bad enough I didn't stay there long (I'm not sure there's much there for me anyway). It did look pretty at least.
I was lucky enough to avoid most of the bugs (compared to what I've seen in chat at least) so I'm free from the salt that made me drop the game last time. Don't know if I'll stick for long considering my main gameplay loop isn't really a thing anymore but we'll see, I might find something new to do in the meantime.
The few issues with the game that did come up include:
- Changing components through mobiGlas doesn't stick, no matter what. This is a problem since I'm still using my trusty Aurora most of the time and they are too outdated to have physical component access. I'm still salty CIG leaves starter ships in a shitty state despite them serving as the introduction for many new players.
- They should really cut down on Jump Point travel visuals (or give us settings to do it on our side). The experience itself is cool but boy was it rough to fly through the thing without being able to see anything for most of the trip.
Add the lowered performance due to playing on an outdated system and the whole thing ended up more exciting then expected - too bad it was for the wrong reasons. - I can only play at specific times of day so all of my sessions overlapped with periods when US players join EU servers. The moment this happens the whole atmosphere of the game shifts significantly - chat is filled with fighting, name calling and politics. Number of reported griefing (real and just unwanted PvP) skyrockets. Just being on the server feels more hostile and exhausting.
I'm not saying CIG should implement region lock but I really hope they'll start doing their job reigning in the player base before it's too late. There IS a point where things can go too far and scare away "normal" players for good.
All in all, it was a good experience in terms of technical performance. I'm still a bit unhappy with some of the gameplay/design decisions (both already implemented and announced) but not to a point of dropping out for good. Not yet anyway.
I'll just try to find my own fun for now and hope for the best. That's all I can do after all.