Not necessary to existing players but necessary for Splitscreen as their sole intent now is to keep bringing in new players to keep up their income. (They're a business so I have nothing against this.)
Why are they only concentrating on only bringing in new players and refining the existing content? Might have something to do with the little slip from a GM about 6 weeks who confirmed there is no new system planned in the foreseeable future, let alone currently being in development. I expect Splitscreen try to plan at least a year in the future so Sirius is currently End Game for at least another 12 months.
The GM might be wrong, but as his post in the German forums was deleted pretty swiftly, along with their comment reposted by a player twice in the English forums being deleted quickly as well, I expect there's a great deal of truth behind it.
Saying that, I expect my comment on it will be deleted quickly also. lol
Back to the new website. I'm pretty astonished it's been released when the whole site is only part done. I have found a lot of the links do not work any more. They go to a page that's forbidden, page not found or back to the main page. And what has happened to the patch log? (kind of pointless I know as most changes are not announced anyway

)