Bingo! Thanks for playing.
But seriously, a large chunk of the Flight Sim userbase, aka a large chunk of the funding for development of this game, flies over their house, maybe does something else, and then never plays it again.
When you keep that in mind, it makes sense why they designed Career Mode to be a grinding game. The grinding rewards are the hook that keep engagement in the sim up. This player base may not include you, but it’s a big group that Microsoft now has to cater to.
The users who wind up using the sim long term because they’re grinding gamers aren’t going to buy the base platform, and then get a later released add-on either. The grinding component needs to be a core part of the game itself.
Development for Career Mode does have a lot of trickle down that could benefit Free Flight simmers: persistent wear on your plane’s paint, bugs, dirt; management of maintenance, fuel, and storage; an objective tracking system that could be used for the types of flying you actually do want to do. I would love to have that in Free Flight with specific planes that are “mine”. Whereas now in Free Flight I feel like I’m just using a factory fresh generic copy of a plane every time I start a flight.
What should be an add-on is the type of career mode flying you want to do, not the core gamer crowd. IE something that’s more complex and realistic. Actual airline routes with the real liveries. Fedex Cargo routes. Military training etc. That stuff won’t make it in the base sim, but would be great for a third party add-ons, which now have a chance of actually happening thanks to Career Mode.
So even if you don’t use it, there’s a lot of potential for it to benefit you, either broadly speaking through expansion of the simulator itself, or specific features you may actually use.