The core of the Elite series is that you are the pilot of your ship, exploring, trading and fighting your way across the galaxy and as an individual you have little if any impact upon that galaxy. Elite Dangerous extends that to a multiplayer game in a single galaxy and therefore the collective impact of multiple players should have some visible impact.
Rather than focusing on new mechanics, the pieces that support that framework need to be developed and made into a coherent whole.
In order to provide "content" we have these psuedo random Nav beacons, poi's and space signals. The mission system attempts to provide the player with some sort of quest framework. Wings, groups, player factions, Powerplay and the back ground simulation all attempt to provide some sort of collective framework and impact. Whilst each of these elements has its place, the fundamental problem is that there is no cohesive whole where the elements are connected and follow a logical and automated structure that enables the collective will to show its impact.
eg
Nav Beacon should be the point a player enters a system. Then the nav beacon has a purpose and the ships at the Nav beacon make sense.
When I commit to a power I should also commit to to a faction or be independent. If I belong to a faction, if I enter a system that faction shows as a system faction.
Powerplay transitions should happen when a set of criteria are reached, not at a collective PP roll over.
My take is that FD internally have not yet resolved how far ED is going to go from its single player roots to a multiplayer experience where the player groups become ascendant. Since launch we are seeing more multiplayer stuff added, but its not clear how far that is going to be taken. 2.1 could be a landmark release if they connect system factions to missions and add the persistent faction npc's, because that will be making two currently disparate elements fit together. Hopefully over time they will add more to make it fit together.