Has been brought up before, I'll bring it up again:
The hard countering of melee techs instead of fixing the issues.
I played as a melee shield tech, with my melee being kinetic only, and my ranged being electric only, solely to minmax the roles of the weapons, i.e. secondary for shields, and main for the enemy. As shields are weak to electric damage, and kinetic damage is the least protected against type when it comes to armour.
I was level 10, with max stats, a vibrolass, and a CTL-3 when I fought Janeira. Literally only won because I save scummed and did regen and holding down 1 until Janeira's shields were down, and I could use gravity disruptor until it died, or I died because the thing regens not only health, but more importantly SHIELDS when struck by electric attacks, despite shields having 50% electric damage weakness. I think my chance of success was something in the ballpark of 1/30 to beat the damn thing. It was not a fun fight in the slightest as basically all my skills except for two were rendered completely useless, detrimental even, as it'd just heal the opponent.
If "charge weapon" lasted for 3-4 rounds, and either just multiplied the weapon's current damage types, or added energy damage to the weapon attacks, it'd no longer be broken. Easy fix, devs, please get it implemented ASAP.
The greatest issue with enemies that heal from electric damage, is that all the best melee weapons in the game do electric damage, so even if you're not playing tech spec. you get punished.
Another gripe:
Unavoidable quests, time limited quests, and percentage based stat checks coming together at once.
Yes, I'm talking about Nastizia. Fuck that entire quest so hard. All I wanted was to recruit Ramis and get started on maxing my level 10 stats. Instead, I had to save edit my stats to max solely so that I could actually beat the quest, so that I could get back to actually grinding my stats to max.
I'm fine with forced quests, I'm fine with time limited quests, but for the love of [REDACTED] don't fucking combine the two, or worse, add percentage based stat checks! Because it WILL happen that it lands on someone when they're least ready for it.
Yet another gripe:
The UX, which has been brought up before, and I'll bring it up again here, but not in the "wish I could see stats and map at the same time again" kinda way.
Why does the inventory's buttons not work? It says "press 2 to use", but here I am being forced to manually use 249 Nuki Nutbutter in a row with my mouse because the god-damn "use" button doesn't actually use the 2-key. Makes me wish the "Use" button allowed you to use stacks of items at once.
Oh, also the game crashes if you add more items to the checkout cart than can fit into your inventory, instead of doing the rational thing of being set to the max that can fit in your inventory.
More gripe:
Swimming in the pool at New Texas's gym. If I have the Gray Goo armour equipped with the swimming suit style, I don't bloody expect to get all my clothes removed as I "get ready" to enter the pool, now, do I? I lost a good bit of time thanks to finding out that that's why I was gaining exhibitionism points while I was grinding Aim.
Yet more gripe:
The soft-capping of stat gain from workouts as you reach max.
You start off by getting like 1 point every workout, then gradually you slow down to a crawl of ~0.2 points per workout as you're like 3 points away from capping. Considering the fact that percentage based checks exist, this is literally just annoying and serves no purpose beyond a shimmer of "realism".
Gripe 2: electric boogaloo:
Unfinished content, and unfinished content related accessories.
Deepsea Research Facility gives you the option to kill or take an AI core, as well as gives you two key-item key cards, which you get the choice of handing in or keeping without any way to know which you should pick as there's literally nothing for that stuff yet, and afaik there's none planned yet either. Which means you're basically soft-locked the moment you decide to do that dungeon, as you'll have to revert to whichever save actually suits you better when content gets released, if ever.
Additionally, key-items for completed quests should be removed from the key-items list. I really don't want to have to trawl through that list to try and find whatever key-items I have that are actually of active interest.
Additional gripe:
Ships.
Why even bother with getting enough money for the MS-XI or Sledgehammr, when the only really viable way to get said money is to reach the casino, at which point you've already acquired the Sidewinder, which is currently the best ship in the game, for free.
Shit like the Sidewinder should be put in exclusively side-quest rewards, and really difficult side-quests at that. Not on the god-damn road of the main quest. Actually atrocious game-design.
Not to mention, when it comes to gadgets and weapons, the only gadget that truly matters is the Capacitor Bank. And for weapons, all you need is 1 EM Turret, and 2 Machine Gun Turrets, and you're set.
My loadout on the sidewinder of 1 EM Turret, 2 Machine Gun Turrets, 3 Capacitor Banks, 4 Tuned Emitters, 2 Hardened Systems, and 1 Power Tuner has made me literally unkillable when it comes to ship combat in a way that makes fights so dull that I just want an auto-combat button that just lets me skip past the fight because of how utterly outmatched the enemy ships are. Never taken a single point of hull damage, or even used a Capacitor Bank once since I got the sidewinder and outfitted it with this stuff.
And also, why do all ship hulls have such massive corrosive damage vulnerability when there are no weapons to take advantage of it?
Kind of a gripe:
Meta knowledge.
Showing the players that the PC has something along the lines of the most cutting edge nano machine stuff ever in them, hence the ability to transform so much, so freely, with so little risk. You can only really pick this up via absolutely miniscule subtext in NPC dialogues and behaviour, with the exception of doctor Lessau at Uveto, who explicitly tells you that it's only thanks to Victor Steele and others, among which you have Lessau himself, that the PC is able to transform so much with minimal risk. It's at least the only thing I can think of as to why there's so much current era conservativeness to a lot of the characters, despite the fact that there's literally vending machines that sell highly transformative substances, and the fact that such genetic manipulation makes it so that biological relatedness means fuck-all since you can literally within a couple minute become so genetically distinct from your own family that you could sire children with them with no risks. Like, this universe is like Cyberpunk but to the max, and also even hornier, somehow, and yet still carrying modern era ethical dilemmas that are innately solved by the very nature of how absolutely power-gamey and meta a lot of the things in-universe are.
Last gripe:
Uveto.
It's been in the game for what feels like half a decade at this point. Why is this planet still unfinished? I'm referring specifically to the Hunter’s Dream. I can understand the key cards, as that could be for some content after the PC acquires Steele Tech, which puts it far into the backlog, but this spot of absolute nothingness has been there (I think) ever since Uveto became available (in the public builds).