My main gripe with the Galactic War is the story
This tends to be overlooked, but I personally find it much more annoying than recent lack of player agency in how things play out.
It happens every time. We get close to having a compelling storyline, then it all just drops for non-stop filler where nothing ever happens, with sprinkles of something that looks interesting but never goes anywhere.
Recent example is Cyberstan -> Exospires -> fuckin nothing. Exospire storyline was what, a month ago? I played it for a minute, then went on to Crimson Desert as that came out. Between then and now, literally nothing has happened, and all the momentum was lost.
We were right there, as usual. As soon as it gets good, it all grinds to a halt.
And looking at how long it took in the past before interesting story bits, few months of filler is a common occurrence.
Here’s how it feels to me:
“Oh no, Shitbot 3000 has a new cyborg lover! Quickly, collect 2 trillion samples, it’s really important! Check back in a week.”
“Well done, Helldiver! They’re getting married, we must secure the venue! Hold Curia when order expires in a week!”
“Dude, it’s the weekend, do you not have a family? Awaiting orders, dumbass.”
“Strategic opportunity! Super Minister ate a fried hunter, now he has a tapeworm. Kill 1 superearthillion terminids to find the right size pincer, so we can pull that worm out of his ass! You have a week.”
“It’s the weekend again dude, wait until Monday.”
Then we get just a smidge, just a little taste of something happening.
“Oh holy fuckamoli, we think the squids are summoning their space god, we have readings of them making contact with an unknown space race too, and also they might be holding gameplay recordings of TES VI on one of their planets! Go and liberate those planets to find out more, you have 3 days!”
We finish it, await orders for two days and guess what happens?
“Okay, well done, we’ll look into it. In the meantime, that guy has another tapeworm. You know what to do, see ya next week.”
And then we run around with pincers for half a year, just unlocking warbonds.