MM stands for ‘Master Modes’, it is essentially an overhaul to how the flight works that got dropped this latest patch. It pretty radically changed how flight worked and people are quite divided on it. There are a lot of details, but that’s kind of where the problems come from.

Old flight model:

For the past however many years (5, 7?) The flight model has been one where you fly fluidly – you have a single mode of flight and then you have the choice to turn on or off “Decoupled” mode. When in decoupled mode your ship flies the way you would expect it to in a vacuum; no friction, if you throttle forward then let off you keep going in that direction indefinitely until you apply retro-thrust or accelerate in a different direction.

In “Coupled” mode your ships computer would basically apply your retro-thrusters automatically to kind of simulate a bit of friction, and in atmosphere it would allow you to hover in place. So if you let off your throttle you’d drift to a stop rather than drift indefinitely in space or fall out of the sky.

With this system the speed range was very large (0-1200 m/s), and it was up to the pilot to learn how to control their speed so they didn’t always overshoot or “joust” with a target. That was where the skill came in, people who learned how to use speed judicially typically came out on top.

That was before, and it was fairly straightforward, intuitive flight system that felt good. It wasn’t completely perfect, but it did feel like there was room to grow as a pilot and improve. Personally I loved flying around just for the feel if it and the flight system was one of the things new players often remarked on as one of the highlights.

New flight model:

Master Modes changed flight so now there is a “Nav” mode, which is for traveling only. It disables your shields, weapons and makes your ship slightly less maneuverable, but lets you reach those top speeds of ~1200 m/s.

And then there is “SCM” mode, which turns on your shields and weapons/mining lasers but limits you to a really small speed window (~250 m/s). So no more overshooting and jousting since you’re forced to travel at a controlled speed, but the kinds of maneuvers you can employ is now much more limited and the skill ceiling is much lower.

You can still use Decoupled/Coupled mode in SCM but even in Decoupled mode your ship still slows you down automatically if you go too fast. It feels bad because it will also prevent you strafing when you’re over the speed limit, so you get kind of locked into a trajectory until your ship slows you back down.

If you need to run from a fight you have to switch to Nav mode, which has a spool up timer before you get access to higher speeds, but your shields drain right away. This makes it quite difficult to escape a situation if you don’t immediately start running, if you’re already entangled in a fight and realize you’re losing (or another enemy ship shows up) you basically have very little chance to escape.

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TL;DR The game went from having a lot of freedom and being very fluid, to being bogged down by artificial-feeling constraints and a bunch of modes and other weird changes that make the game feel more like a simplified arcade game with an overly convoluted control scheme. You’re forced to use training wheels and can never take them off. It also turns ship combat purely into a numbers game, so the prediction by players is that when CIG starts growing server sizes the game is going to just be about who has a bigger zerg, rather than who has the more skilled pilots. Anyone who isn’t in an org ends up out in the cold.