Fair points.
CR did redesign the game due to increased backing on an incredible scale.
With that a very small set of features got removed and an enormous feature set was added/expanded.
I am not trying to argue that point that the scope never changed. That did happen. And I think your analogy is probably not far off (though a little maybe). He did take pledges for one thing and expanded that into something else when the pledges were more than expected, exponentially so.
But there has not been constant scope creep. There has not been continual adding of features, which is the complaint that irks me so.
The game went through a single massive redesign 6 years ago. Since then they have been working from that same design. So hearing things like “constant scope creep” just triggers me because it is simply not true.
I got my degree in 2005 in Gaming Design and Development from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Since then I have written 100s of thousands of lines of code, designed systems as small as a single web page and as large and complex as satellite communications between offshore vessels. I have been part of the initial proof of concept and design of projects as well as the continued ongoing support for applications that have been running for years. I have seen great ideas implemented poorly and bad ideas that were well designed and well written and literally everything in between.
I say all of that to tell you that from a designer and a developer point of view, SC is doing fine. They had some rough start of it, but over the past few years they have really refined their methods and they are making good progress. I do not have any special view into their development other than ETF chat and some occasional one on one with a few of the devs. I do not have a red bat phone to CR’s office and I am not claiming to know any special secrets. There is certainly a lot of the development I do not see. So I can only base my professional opinion on what I do see. And that is regular and steady progress toward clearly defined goals.
That does NOT mean that I think CIG could not do better. There are plenty of complaints that I have about their business model and about their design methods. But ultimately I believe they are going to deliver and there will be a magnificent game at the end of the road. Not 20 years from now. Realistically I would expect something of a beta release around 2025.