I feel guilty about it, but I appreciate the monthly pass. I played EUIV for exactly one month, at a total cost of like $7 (got the base game for free at some point) with all the bells and whistles. It seemed like a good compromise because you'd have to pay it for years at this point to cover the DLC out right, but it is a disgusting level of rent seeking behavior.
Now it bothers me that I'd need to put another $7-$10 into the machine to access those saves, but not as much as if I'd throw down hundreds of dollars on it to own the content for a 10 year old game.
This. So much this. I hate what Discovery did with S31. The Federation isn't the Federation with an official black ops gestapo running around.
Also, I love Michelle Yeoh but I am way more interested in the Capt. Georgiou we missed out on than the genocidal maniac Empress we got.