Well, since this thread is still going on, might as well add another thing that might help open, aside from some organization and (obviously) fixing matchmaking.
While I do enjoy the occasional bout of PvP, not going to lie, the only reason I've been playing consistently in Open is I still have yet to run into anyone. xP It'd only take, probably, two encounters in a few hours' time to send me back into Solo, because I've generally had my fill of player competition very quickly. I've always been far more drawn to grouped PvE in my online games. I.e., gathering a band of either friends or random cohorts and taking on steep, nigh-impossible odds that would have reduced individual me to a fine, red mist, often requiring great coordination and communication, as well as strategy and forethought, to emerge victorious. In these games, going PvE is no badge of dishonor because the PvE can actually BE a complete pain in the ass, (someone mentioned City of Heroes earlier in this thread, going to +rep the bejeezus outta him, cause that game was fantastic,) with one wrong move, one moment of lost concentration, dissolving into what survivors remain fleeing for their lives as a horde of hungry foes nip at their heels, leaving a trail of player corpses from the site of battle, all the way to the exit. Then comes the post-mortem, the 'What did we do wrong?' 'Okay, how do we go back in in such a way that we obliterate ALL of them?' That's what inevitably draws me into online play, and online games with primarily competitive mechanics inevitably drive me AWAY, not towards.
And right now, Elite's online mechanics essentially ARE competitive. You can either chat awkwardly to someone as you float in front of each other, fire at each other, or run away from the guy firing at you. Maybe, if you already know one another and/or see them get Interdicted by a player, you can drop in on their wake and assist them, but even that's inevitably PvP, albeit with improved odds. As things currently stand, in Open, finding a random person (let alone people) interested in PvE cooperative shenanigans would require the following conditions;
a) Obviously, me being in the same system.
b) The gods of matchmaking not sticking us in a parallel universe.
c) This eventually-discovered player being interested in a heroic teamup, as opposed to stealing my lunch moneys.
As has been established, the odds of being in the same areas as another player (short of occupying the same few systems,) are small. The matchmaking makes those odds smaller. And the naturally chaotic nature in terms of what sort of player I'd find make that smaller still. In the event I'm looking for a teamup, I am likely far better served just playing another game entirely, or joining that PvE private group because at least I know the vast majority of them have cooperative play in mind. Hopefully the addition of Wings will help this, but unless content is on the way to take advantage of easier player cooperation (convoy or task force missions, in other words,) we're pretty much going to be groups of ships that fly around and do exactly the same thing we did as single ships. Hoping they might pull a trick City of Heroes (and, likely, others did) in instances, whereby the larger your group, the more challenging the instance became. Normal missions undertaken by teams of eight were actually MORE dangerous than the same mission undertaken by one's self, because they stuffed bad guys in there up to the rafters, and it wasn't hard to accidentially aggro four groups when you only meant to aggro one, turning everything into a cluster**** of death.
