A lot of the recent changes are about tuning for a longer early game, and postponing bounty hunts is a part of that. Especially with the upcoming(?) small hangars for early game interceptors and ground vehicles. A lot of that is wasted if a player can just push for pirhana's and 30mm cannons by month three. I get that a lot of people who've been sharpening their early game strats for a while are going to feel cheated by the deliberate pacing, but I can't hate it.
Which is fine, but the Captain's Logs really need to be pushed back and the alien activity reduced further in early months to compensate. Or in general, honestly. Early bounty hunts were the saviour for helping keep your score above water early, now they're gone but the pressure to keep it up is still there.
I do get what Delian is saying, Modern game design tends towards tougher early games being puzzles you have to solve, and then gradually removing the restrictions on you, making you feel like a badass that needs to put less effort in as time goes on. There IS a good reason for that, it helps people stay engaged as it feels like genuine progress is happening.
Take stuff like playing Rimworld and Factorio and Minecraft (with mods) where going from a shack and stone pickaxe at the start all the way up to a fully automated mega-factory/colony/mob farm occurs. People love this so much that it's practically a copycat industry. And people love to optimize and speedrunners are wildly popular for a reason.
XPZ feels like it wants to keep you in the mire forever, though, and that will be expanding with the early game being lengthened.
I'm on a break from my current game because in late year 2 there was an exhausting amount of missions every month to do, even when I was deliberately skipping crash sites. I got the impression that 'boy this is really dragging' and I started this on N9.5.6, so skipping chunks of that early stuff initially. Like, I'd do a whole evening's session after coming back from work, and in about 4 hours of time I'd get to play, I'd get through 2-3 in-game days, and that was a bit demoralising.
