8. "Dying" of ED has just started so many of you can not notice it.
9. FD have still a lot of time to do something with it but if they will continue to go current way ED will be dead when SC comes out (most people just dont have time to play 2 MMOs simultaneously).
Do not panic in advance.
The reason for the decline of interest in the game is an attempt "FD" to please the players, all at once. The first blow was raw "Power Play", the second is currently almost release version "CQC with "certain difficulties" with searching groups. I would like to add, that some types of new ships very much resemble each other.
However, Elite Dangerous is not "WoT", "DotA", "Hearthstone" and other games from the series "30 minutes of adrenaline", the specifics of the game not in the dynamics (although it is in the game), but in the atmosphere. Of course to the atmosphere of the "EVE online" so far away, but here we must remember that Elite Dangerous is still in the production stage and what we now with you are not the final product (while EVE have more than 10 years). And if you look at the sad experience of the "Star forge", the case with Elite Dangerous is not so bad, FD still working and not going to close the game.
At winter, will be a planets, most likely even more raw than "Power Play" and "CQC" is, taken together. But there will be another influx of players. In 2016 will be crafting: most likely, of modules that we will not see by 2017, people come and go, but the game remains.
And what alike will be the "FPS" is a big question, to us it remains just wait. But it will never be better (or at least at the same level) than at "Star Citizen" - different prioritization (at "SC" is the "FPS"; at "ED" is a seamless galaxy). But even if you just walk WITHOUT a ship or SRV – it would be very cool, because it is very tiring to be "a prisoner of the chair".
Most likely even in the distant year 2020 (end of all works) the game will have bugs.
But whatever pleased us games, from other publishers, at this moment, no one managed to come close to that harmonious balance between the SEAMLESS, DYNAMIC and GRAPHICS, which was achieved FD.
If you want to make game die, like many others before, then continue accelerating FD. But if you want to help: say what does not work, in what part exactly and what could help to fix it.
What FD need now: is not to go on about the players ("All at Once", just like the neighbors have), and to adhere to the rule: If you started to do something, keep it till the level of "ELITE".
P.S. "Star Citizen" - is a good game, but personally, I will never going to play it, even if "ED" is actually stop releasing additions. Don't like "loading screens" and "invisible walls" that say "You are leaving this location. Do you want to go to the next location?"