Yes, I've always thought those kinds of ideas were an interesting possibility; but realistically, it takes a lot more coordination for a few players to form an organized and fair police force than it does for a large mob of players to form a chaotic gang.
It's not just coordination; many of the tasks needed to have a working society are very boring or tiresome, and as such it's not reasonable to expect players to take matters on their own hands and do a good job of it. Not due to lack of ability, but due to lack of interest, engagement, and, well, fun. This is supposed to be a game, a leisure activity, not a job.
It's akin to how there's always a chronic shortage of tanks, and to a smaller extent healers, in raiding and dungeon running for more common MMOs. It's not that there aren't players that enjoy those roles; rather, the number of players that enjoy them is not enough to allow that aspect of the game to run smoothly.
End result, when you think about the predatory roles and the protector roles in open world PvP games, there are always far too many predators and far too few protectors for the game to be enjoyable for the players that don't want to take part in that kind of player conflict. The closest to getting this working I've ever seen is EVE, but there it's fueled by territorial control, and even then it's becoming more like real world politics in ways that are almost universally seen as harmful for the game: large groups are seeking stability, slowing down changes, pursuing non-aggression pacts with other large groups while stamping out any smaller group that doesn't swear fealty to them, and so on.
Thiis is a online game and the game evolves through constant improvement. And this can only be done by the devs effectively communicating with the player base. So don't tell everyone that this thread was created as a buyer's remorse issue or "I was expecting a totally different game play because I didnt research enough" argument.
Well, many posts from those that want to restrict or remove solo mode do sound a lot like buyers remorse. Many go along the lines, "I thought this was a MMO, in MMOs players can't hide in solo and play, and this is ruining my experience (or harming the economy, or isn't fair for those that don't play solo, or result in a less populated world, or whichever complaint is currently in)." It does feel like those players didn't look into the game or research how multiplayer works before purchasing it.
BTW: yeah, it's an online game (unfortunately), but many players purchased it for the solo mode, or even the sadly removed single player experience. Which is perfectly fine, as the game was always advertised as allowing players to select who they would play with, or even completely isolate themselves if they so desire.
Ah comeon. That is just such a silly comment. Look: During christmas i spent a week in hospital and I played elite. With the hotspot of my mobile. And yeah: It was cool that I could play my original save.....but this was an exceptional event. IF you want/have to spet your time, 2 weeks in a hotel. Well either you start a solo save, or you deal with it, that you can NOT PLAY ELITE FOR TWO SILLY WEEKS. Why should the gameplay for the rest of the year be a mess, just because of two ridiculous weeks. SO yes, my "confidence" as you call it, is in my opinion just normal common sense and if you have a look at the gaming world out there, you might have noticed, that having solo and online in the same save is not a common concept - for good reasons.
Actually, what is almost always kept separate are offline saves from online saves. If the game has a mode where all the data is kept online, it will usually not be possible to import data from playing offline into it, due to hacking concerns.
But solo in ED is not offline. Solo mode is still an online (and even multiplayer, in the sense that it uses the same galaxy) mode.
Now, some ten, fifteen years ago it was the common belief that players that evolved their characters in a game mode without non-consensual PvP should never be allowed to bring that character to a game mode where such non-consensual PvP can happen. But things evolved. UO was one of the first high profile games to allow that, with travel between Trammel (PvE world) and Felucca (PvP world) freely available. WoW, when it first allowed character transfers, had a rule that PvE characters could not be transferred to a PvP realm, with the reasoning that it would trivialize and mock the extra effort in dealing with PvP while leveling; they went back on that a few years ago, realizing that trying to keep the characters segregated made no sense, and nowadays even allow PvP characters to temporarily play on PvE realms by exploring how groups work. DCUO started with segregated PvP and PvE servers, but now allows players to jump back and forth between them as often as they want. And so on.
In other words, sharing the "saves" of characters leveled in an environment with non-consensual PvP and leveled in a "safe" PvE environment is nowadays the rule rather than the exception. Well, that if the game has the two settings at all; there is a trend nowadays where many MMOs release with just the PvE environment, without any kind of non-consensual PvP at all, while a rare few release only with the non-consensual PvP environment.
