What do I expect from Egosoft in the next game?
My first instinct is to say nothing, it's been a year since I last looked here but just read through this thread and have to say, don't pick and choose. Select all of the above, there is no reason you cannot do it all so players can choose the type of game they play. You just need to return the options to us, as was said above, back tracking now will only lose your only remaining customer base. You opened this can of worms, just add a XR difficulty mode in it so they don't have to make any choices.
X Rebirth has nothing for someone like me, it's a game for children and it's pretty obvious to me that it's not a game for you either. Your previous games were so successful because they were creations of wanting to make the kind of game you wanted to play, a sandbox game that wasn't dumbed down, you added more options because someone in the office wanted that option and you rolled with it. Just go back to that and please stop listening to your groupies or focus groups. If XR was being played by anyone at egosoft in their free time it wouldn't have half these problems and it shows. X to X3 were labours of love, XR is just hard labour.
Add: A suggestions thread I made almost 2 years ago.
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=356182
Take it easy, If you can't - Take it by force.