I agree with most of the comments here in support of CQC and wanting more features.
For some that mentioned about the icon, it's exactly the same for combat, trade, exploration and CQC. If someone doesn't like it, that's fair enough but they won't earn the rank, it's all our choices to make.
Personally, I thought the same thing when we first got CQC so decided to rank up. It's as simple as that o7. I used to play a lot at the start and got to champion, then dwindled off in comparison but still rarely play, and have reached hero 6%. I've played CQC for just under a week in game time and can say it's a lot of fun.
So Frontier ask - what's the problem?
Like anything though, there needs to be variety. Having a few maps and ships really isn't enough to keep players long term. For the meaning of CQC, Frontier could take the word 'Championship' and make it actually into that:
Have league tables to make it competitive,
A main game CQC queue option in the panels,
CQC with chat and lobbies,
Canyon racing and point to point racing as a new game mode,
higher payouts,
more space maps (from the countless CQC structures already in the main game),
surface maps (around settlements / structures / scenic landscapes),
new ships (taipan at least)
They would draw back the players who've lost motivation, draw in the new players or people who haven't tried it and keep people interested once they're there!
Then have a dedicated Dev team for continuous improvement and Frontier can achieve the ambition they had of developing an eSport.
There's s a lot of potential for the second-to-none space fighter arena. If you haven't already, try CQC in VR [hotas]
I like most of those ideas, especially having chat available in the lobby. At least then people would be able to tell others when a lobby is broken and that everybody needs to disconnect and retry in a few minutes.
More maps with tight corridors, and with the powerups only accessible by flying through them would be fun, too. For me, one of the most fun aspects of CQC is just trying to get through those corridors at full speed without hitting anything. Bonus points if you can do it without blowing up the breakable sections.