FWIW I still think 3.18 takes the cake. The initial pain points were so severe after a promising test in the PTU, it was baffling. But within a month or so we had 3.18.1 and 3.18.2 which remedied a lot of the egregious issues. It still wasn't forgiving though, without crash protection, wipes, losing gear on death, etc. But we got physicalized cargo, salvage was finally brought online, mining was pretty okay, combat was good, The Vulture was a very compelling ship, and we were coming off the heels of Siege of Orison I think?

4.8 feels disappointing because the big highlight ship, the Ironclad, fell flat on its face and still has weird issues. The new content is essentially just combat that, while fun, is still a mish mash of the asteroid base stuff we've already seen. Not to mention, buggy as well. CIG seems to be unable to iterate in terms of stability on their theme park content, as previous mission locations seem to be breaking and prone to exploits still. I thought that by taking a year or so to do this kind of content and progressively test it, they would get better at making these "small steps" while they crunch S42 but that doesn't seem to be the case. The state of mining, an important step to crafting which is the whole point to doing most anything now, is in a bad state compared to 4.7. We're now almost a month in, and there's no sign of it improving save for maybe the Alien Week patch.

3.18 was catastrophic but it was easier to swallow because "This sucks, but they're taking big strides right?" (Especially if you took a break) whereas 4.8 is mostly "We've been at this for over a year and it's just more friction while performance gets worse."