I am not a long-time supporter as I have only been playing 6 months, but I can sympathize with you as I have been in similar situations in other games and have taken the angle you have here with doing some dev bashing and showing some frustrations.
I don’t feel they have given up on us though or the servers would be shut down and James and the other devs would not be helping with anything. The game in its current state is on par with what Minecraft has out there and various other games like it and more development, while very wanted, isn’t really needed. Granted I am a firm believer that if things were “promised” then they should be delivered, but I am not sure what was promised at this point as much as just something that was hoped to be put in at some point.
Titans, Hunter, Swords and Shields, private solar systems will still not solve the overall problem of playing a game for over 2-4+ years will eventually become stale. Through an update or two out every year may bring you back for a little while but in the end, it’s a sandbox MMO and the game requires you to come up with a lot of your own content. It’s the nature of the genre.
The game could be profitable in its current state if it was marketed and pushed and some advertising being done. I am not sure why Larian and Square Enix couldn’t be used in some form to help push the game it just baffles me at this point. Unless there are some limitations with the game and it would be able to handle the load of a large player base and thus it prevents it from being profitable then I could semi-understand.
I know there are some very bright people on here and we could probably do that math on what it takes to run the current universe and the cost to develop say a swords and shields update and then compare that with the amount of gleam club, sovereigns being paid for and game sales and estimate if things could be profitable. In my eyes, I could see where it could be… but I also see where profits currently aren’t a stable one, not because of people leaving, but because there is no actual form of stable income. There is no guarantee Paka will buy 200 sovereigns and sustain those, there is no guarantee that the players playing will buy gleam club and there is no guarantee that someone will buy anything other than the core game… so at times I get it…
All that said, it could be profitable possibly if marketed more, I don’t think that these updates are going to solve your issue in the long run though as I have stated to so many others. They may curb your appetite for something extra on top of the base game that is already there… but all in all like most sandboxes the game is only as fun as you allow it to be and the game is what you make it … if you are bored … then maybe it’s time to move on.
EDIT: Didn’t mean that as a reply to Paka, but oh well 