I agree with this wholeheartedly. Instead of paywalling everything, let people try out items, ships, etc.
It's this pervasive focus on marketing that's never really gone away since the crowdfunding campaign. When we hit $2m, we were promised a game. Goals were set $4m past that and we bulldozed them all even though the game was already funded. $11m later, they're still raking it in, and we're still getting the same game give or take a few ship classes, laser pistols, and the like.
They can say that we're pledging, not buying, items and ships until they are blue in the face, but the truth is that they are marketing these ships with every update/brochure/commercial, trying to get existing pledges to change their mind and throw in some more money for a shiny new ship. They're going after new pledges by making the some of the goal rewards provide items to people who have pledged 'before this point', and by extending benefits like LTI to people long after they were supposed to be over and done - but only if you pledge in the next week! (Now, don't mistake me for someone who's whining about not being a member of such an exclusive club anymore - it's not that they did it that bothers me, it's why they did it.)
Then the hangar module comes out. Instead of trying to get the maximum amount of content out to the maximum amount of people - showcasing all the work they've done so far on the ships to all the people who've donated money - you only get the ship you bought. Interesting how it's a donation when people complain, but a purchase when you want to look at their pre-alpha content.
And with this release comes the item shop. A lot of people are apparently up in arms about the prices, but I'm annoyed that they're charging for pre-alpha content at all. I could buy a cool looking laser today, and when the dogfighting module comes out I find out that the projectile sprite is a rainbow and the weapon sound effect is a fairy giggling - except now I'm stuck with this weapon purchase forever (or until the game launches and I have an NPC to sell it to, whichever comes first). CR even said "Yeah, the prices are too high, probably going to halve most of them." - except what about the people who already paid real money to play 'pimp my ride'? Oh, well it's a donation, and it's optional. Okay, then why do the prices matter?
The hangar module and even the dogfighting module should be about exposing the maximum amount of content to the maximum amount of players so that we can do the maximum amount of testing possible. The idea that they can't do that because everything we do now is going to carry over into the final game is ludicrous. Everyone should start fresh at final release. Players shouldn't be forever stuck with the decisions they made when the rules were still being made up as they went along, especially when to make these decisions, you have to pay real money after you've already bought the game.
Finally, is anyone really wowed by the content in the hangar module? I get that it's unfinished, I get that it's pre-alpha. But everyone knew that CryEngine 3 could do an FPS very well going into this. Comparing the Constellation renders we had 10 months ago to the ship in the engine I'm not overwhelmed by progress. But maybe that's intentional; I do remember Chris saying he had to disable functionality otherwise people would be flying their ships around the hangars. I hope the dogfighting module is on-time and they knock it out of the park. That will be the real moment of truth.
tl;dr I really wish they'd stop spending so much effort marketing pre-alpha content, and more time making the game they promised us $15 million in crowdfunding ago. Especially when there have been multiple cases of crowdfunded games that were 'too successful' having huge problems with cashflow and feature creep.
The pricing they charge for everything is really setting a bad precedent. Ships that cost hundreds of dollars is really crazy. I worry that it will take ages to earn credits once the game finally releases, especially since you can buy ingame credits directly from them rather than from other players like in Eve Online.