HOW are people actually playing this game?

This is a legitimate question, I'm really not trying to rant or bash the game... I'm legitimately wondering how people actually... play.

I backed SC back in... (just checked my email, Jesus) 2012. I've been passively following ever since.

I'm big in the flight sim world, and many of the hardware reviewers I follow appear to main SC, so I thought with MSFS 2024 being so buggy and Elite Dangerous being so stale, why not hop into SC again? Last time I did was about 4-5 years ago and I couldn't get out of my apartment so I uninstalled it. I figured if there's whole youtube creator communities built around this thing now it must be stable enough to actually... play? Besides the new "4.0" release seems big so why not try it out?

So far in the last 36 hours I have succeeded at:

- Completing the "tutorial" after 3 attempts

- Buying 1 hotdog, 1 noodles, 3 various drinks, and storing one drink for later (still have it!)

- Tracked down the control binding that was causing me to yaw uncontrollably and actually bind usable HOTAS controls

- Bought a rifle, and successfully equipped it to my backpack

- Changed armor and backpacks

- Accepted the intro delivery contract 5 times

- Buying and equipping a multi-tool with a tractor beam attachment

- Successfully loaded 3/8 of the intro delivery quartz to my Aurora twice

- Successfully hauled 3/8 of the intro delivery quartz to whatever-factory-thing-it-was once (not sure it ever actually "took")

So far in the last 36 hours I have also "succeeded" at (in no particular order):

- Dying randomly upon walking out onto the landing pad at Port Tressler (yes, I verified my helmet was on before stepping outside)

- Managing to magically turn everything I was wearing into boxes that I could then not pick up in my room on Port Tressler. This is how I lost the rifle that I bought, along with the backpack and all my starting armor. Still can't seem find it, though that was just a few hours ago so I'm sure it'll magically appear... somewhere... eventually.

- Getting popped out of my ship randomly while quantum tunneling? traveling? to some random station

- Having my "interaction mode" bug out completely so that I couldn't move my mouse beyond the bottom left corner of the screen, successfully preventing me from retrieving the remaining 5/8 boxes of the intro delivery quartz

- Having my ship siezed completely and unable to get delivered after logging out to try and fix the above problem

- Having what appears to be a memory leak upon attempting to use the "LIVE" version of the game while retrieving my ship again in New Babbage since I can't access it in 4.0, so I can't use any elevators after telling NBIS to retrieve my ship.

- Having completley mis-aligned MFD screens in the Aurora... the oldest? starting ship?

I'm sure there's more, these are just what sticks out. Seriously... like, HOW DO YOU ALL ACTUALLY PLAY THIS?

It's been 13 years roughly since I backed this. The promise is there, the simulation is compelling, and CIG has raised what should be clearly enough money... why is this SO BAD?