Regarding David Braben's statement from PC Gamer (Feb 2016).

“There are missions out there I know almost no players have seen,” he says. “But we haven’t communicated it properly. There’s so much in there, and what we see from play patterns is that many do the same thing over and over. In that cycle, they just don’t get to see some of the variation. I’m not blaming players. We got it wrong.” Braben adds that even when he was playing the game in a certain way, he wasn’t seeing everything. “I wasn’t making friends with the minor factions. I was missing out on missions. And most players do that,” he says. “It’s a shame, because the missions actually drive you around the galaxy. But if you keep going back to the same place, you won’t venture very far. We need to change the way we communicate that.”

I know I'm a bit late, but regarding this particular quote from David Braben I have to admit that I have no idea what he's talking about.

There are missions that almost no players have seen? What kind of missions? How do we find them? He goes on to talk about how they've failed to communicate things better yet in the previous sentence doesn't even tell us what we're missing. I understand that he wants people to discover things for themselves, but why would I want to put forth the effort if I don't even know whether or not it will be worth it, or what I'm even supposed to be looking for?

“I wasn’t making friends with the minor factions. I was missing out on missions. And most players do that,” he says.

I thought most people ARE making friends with minor factions? I know I have been, and I haven't noticed any new missions.

“It’s a shame, because the missions actually drive you around the galaxy. But if you keep going back to the same place, you won’t venture very far.

Wait, I thought we were supposed to stick around and make friends to see new missions? Now we have to go all around the galaxy? I've been all around the galaxy, and in my opinion if you've seen one bulletin board you've seen them all.

If we're supposed to be taking new missions from the bulletin board upon our arrival from a previous mission, and be "driven" around the galaxy taking missions from factions that have no relation to the former, how are we supposed to be seeing these "hidden" missions? I hope you can understand my confusion.