Keep in mind, SC has been remaking their core gameplay (the spaceship combat) over and over again. As new devs come in (often novices, sc hires as cheap as they can), they want to make their mark so they throw out previous work to make their own version, this happens all over the game. Previous versions were actually much better. What they are left with now is a very poorly designed and tuned spaceflight system with !!multiple!! layers of autoaim active at the same time required to make it even function at all. I regularly see SC players say things like "without the autoaim the game wouldn't be playable" when anyone suggests removing it which is somewhat true for the current version, but the reality is they have had old patches in like 2017 with pretty deep, fun and playable (albeit, very buggy) versions of the space combat gameplay that did not have huge autoaim cones baked into every moment and cancelling your opponent's evasions for you.
And for anyone who has not played SC, the gameplay loops are all extremely glitchy and barely functional. The bugs are beyond pervasive, and exist at a fundemental level, they are building on a foundation of sand. It's not even fun, you need to micromanage your character's hunger and thirst, and drinking water from a bottle can soft lock you until you relog, which of course teleports you back to a spawn point because it's not a real MMO that would save the location of players when they disconnect outside of very specific conditions. The spawn point is often in a location where you need to wait for and then ride a subway car to get to the launch pads. It can take 5-10 minutes of complete time waste just to get back into your ship, let alone get back to wherever you were in the game world.
And then there's the pay to win, obviously there's now a lot of paid exclusive ships that you can't get in-game that are straight up better for certain roles. SC people will argue it's not that bad because some of the pay to win ships will become purchasable in-game later, and that there are other roles where you can get the meta ship for free after either grinding or exploiting yourself to riches. But like, it sucks regardless, haha.