What essential stuff they broke? Cause I haven't seen a single feature in this patch that was not progress
I can just give you my experience.
I logged in day the patch releases. DLSS seems to do nothing for performance...like...at all. Not essential, but noteworthy.
I start in New Babbage, immediately notice that although this is supposed to be a full wipe, I still have all the armor, guns and modules I've collected since the last wipe. All the upgrades I bought for my ships are still in my inventory at New Babbage. So this is not intended. My money was the only thing wiped.
I go to retrieve my ship (I "own" an F8C Lightning). Come to find out all the other ships I purchased including the C2 Hercules, the Vulture and my mining ships are still there, but my Sentinel is gone.
I have the F8C delivered, which takes several tries. Go to Hangar 05 to launch. Except my ship is not loaded on the platform. I stand where the F8C is supposed to be for about 2 minutes (I'm streaming this whole thing) and ship finally loads in and almost kills me.
I get in the ship, realize my weapons are no longer attached (expected after a patch, I just forgot). Leave the hangar, store the ship to outfit it with the components that were supposed to have been wiped. Come to find out, only some of my weapons made it thru the wipe. No biggie...I attach what I have as it's more than I expected to have.
Back to the ship, again taking about a minute to load in, get in and fly out to try my first mission. A bounty hunting mission, where I'm to do a bounty hunter evaluation (the one that cost 500 auec to start). I have my target, who is on Calliope. I figured out the new Quantum Travel process and head there. Upon approach, I am met with a barrage of fire unlike anything I've seen in Star Citizen before. Shields INSTANTLY depleted, I'm taking massive hull damage and had to pull away.
I decide to make a 2nd approach from another angle, maybe land on the steep side of a crater to approach on foot. These guns were on a base that I could not see. The red laser appearing to come from the surface of the planet itself. I was able to get a lock but ship was destroy before I could line up a proper shot. The problem here is that the base didn't load in, and this doesn't seem appropriate for a bounty hunter evaluation mission.
So, I wake back up at NB hospital. Throw on another set of armor grab another gun...and need to head to the commons the grab some ammo. Go to the tram. Get on. When I get to the commons, the ground does not load in. So I'm scared to step off the tram because I'm sure I would fall through the floor and die. But the tram is just gonna keep going. Every stop after this, the ground would not load in. So I decided, I'll take all my gear off and store it and walk out when the tram gets back to the commons, just in case it kills me. Once I get back to the commons, I step out, butt nakey...and the lack of ground does NOT kill me, however I start freezing to death because the game thinks I'm outside. Quickly put my gear back on and eventually the game loads in.
So I head to Centermass in the plaza, go to buy ammo and when I set the delivery location to my backpack I get an error. Set the location back to New Babbage, same error. So I'm like screw it, I'll kill one guy, take his or her gun and ammo and use that. The P4 AR rifle comes with one mag of 40 bullets (a welcome change from the typical 30).
So I head out again, experiencing the same issues as before, but now doing a bunker mission. Luckily this time, there was another ship at the location of this bunker and there were no guns emplacements to worry about. I land, disembark and head into the bunker (which did not load immediately and I probably would not have found, save for the ship that was already there). I go in and notice the elevator has been updated. That's cool, except the panel says the elevator is on the surface and I'm on the surface, yet I'm looking down a gaping chasm, suggesting that the elevator is at the bottom of the bunker. So I hit the button, to maybe bring it back up. Nothing happens.
I literally say to my friends watching "Ok here's the deal. The elevator panel clearly says that the elevator is here on the surface. It also says my position is on the surface, yet there is no elevator here, but a gaping hole instead. Here's what gonna happen. I'm going to test this to see if I fall through this hole or if the elevator is invisible like the ground was at the commons. If I start falling I will immediately quit the game and go and play something else".
I'll give you one guess what happened.