I did not purchase it at full price, I got it on the Steam sale
So you did know, or should have known, that this game was also sold as a single-player game. Again, if that isn't enough of a hint that you won't be able to meet or influence every other player, I don't know what is.
So based on this I find solo play lacking
So they can add endgame content and this would drastically improve the game play and I would be happy!
Elite has always been a franchise where the players must make their own objectives, blaze their own trail. While I do agree with you that the game is, to an extent, content-poor — an issue exacerbated by the Anarchy systems being too easy for an Elite game — hand-holding the player and guiding him across a series of goals was never what Elite was about. I wouldn't complain about more content being added, though, more options for players to engage would always be welcome.
On the other hand I don't think end-game content is appropriate for ED. Or, at least, not end game content in the same sense as in conventional MMOs, where an explicit level barrier prevents the player from engaging that content before going through the rest of the game. Thus, I think any such extra content added in ED should be available for a multitude of ships, for various places along the progression.
Also, ship progression isn't really a requirement in ED. Players should, in the end, fly the ship they enjoy flying the best. It might be a small and agile fighter, a large multi-purpose ship, a good exploration ship, whatever. You should avoid thinking that all players will converge to a single kind of ship, this is not how an Elite game works, which in turn means that making content require specific ships is bad form for a game like ED (well, apart from the obvious requirement of having a cargo hold for taking trading missions and things like this).
They can add guilds and open only mode and player owned space stations and leave the gameplay basically as it, as the interactiveness itself would be added gameplay and I would be happy
This one I doubt. Frontier, if I'm not mistaken, explicitly wanted to avoid the chance of players being ever able to exclude others from part of the game galaxy, and weren't keen on the idea of players owning stations or space. And, in any case, it would interact poorly with Group and Solo modes.
I wouldn't be surprised if Power Play is roughly the closest they are willing to get to that model; it has ownership, but it's a NPC faction owning space and stations, with players still able to play in that space regardless of affiliation. It is also explicitly made to work for all modes, and not only Open.
They could even add the guild type grouping tools for communication and chat I.E faction chat/Faction voice and have a more coop PVE only open world and I likely enjoy that as well.
ED and Star Citizen are together in that their devs don't want players to feel like they must join a group in order to enjoy the game; they see the lone wolf as a target audience and want to attract that kind of player. So, I more or less doubt there will be much in the way of group-only content. Besides, it's not like you can do MMO-style instanced group content in ED's framework, and non-instanced group content is notorious for often being doable by resourceful solo players.
I have never said only open mode that is the only way, just that it is one way they could improve the game IMO.
"Improve" here is subjective. Anything that could ever force me into a PvP situation, either by actually forcing it or by locking PvE content or rewards usable in PvE behind the PvP, is the very opposite to an improvement for me. And, given the fact the largest in-game group is dedicated to PvE, I believe I'm not alone in this.
BTW. Where are all the threads hating on CQC? You solo guys have to know as Robert keeps pointing out that any dev time spent on multiplayer CQC stuff is taking coding time away from solo stuff!
CQC will pay for itself in the new players it attracts. It's actually a very smart use of the already existing game resources to serve a different audience, one that wouldn't be attracted by the current game, without removing anything from the other modes. Win-win.
The only ones unhappy about CQC seem to be a part of the PvPers that fear many of the people playing PvP right now will instead do it in CQC, reducing the population of Open even more.
