Okay, I understand where you're coming from now. That makes sense, at least on paper. I have to ask, though, whether this accountability is actually the case in practise?
Well, in my experience, you really gotta build a game to feature a lot of sideways movement to make something like this work. By this, I mean that as the player progresses their ability progress in other areas should not be blocked off. If the player wants to try using bow instead of a sword, but all their skill points so far are in sword skills, does that adversely affect their potential with a bow?
There's a few different ways to handle this. One way is infinite progression, as long as the difficulty curve is gentle or non-existent (ED has no limiters in this regard). Another way to do this is by having things progress independently of each other (much like the rankings). Another way is to implement the ability to move backwards, then progress in a different direction (such as power reputation). Another way is to not really have any kind of hard progress at all (ED has no hard progress).
Based on this, then absolutely ED can facilitate a lot of lateral movement. But this doesn't answer your question. I'm addressing that next.
Does ED realize player actions and are the players accountable for the results? Yes and no.
CGs - Lots of players do something and something happens. Yes.
->CGs generally result in pretty insubstantial (read: inconsequential) results. No
Trading - Markets price fluctuates when players trade with them. Yes.
->Market prices and supply/demand has absolutely no affect on the galaxy itself. No
Factions - Faction influence on a system can be influenced by players. Yes.
-> Factions don't really do much of anything. No.
You get the picture. On the surface, the game holds the player accountable. But (like Skyrim) this all operates on the very surface of the game. The players can absolutely not impact the galaxy on anything other than this topmost layer.
But something pretty deep exists on the topmost layer: social interactions with other players. Shallow but deep, exists kind of like
that ribbon on the periodic table that has a whole two rows of elements that don't really fit in with the rest of the chart.
However, unfortunately, without more social infrastructure (the ability to organize, align goals, hold meaningful conflict), this hardly gets realized. We can't name an shame in the forums, it's a little inconvenient to name and shame in game, there are no pilot federation reputation rankings, etc etc. Nothing except our trade, combat, and exploration ranks that players carry around with them.
Soooooo..... To answer your question, the potential is there, but the execution is lacking. Hey, that seems to be a reoccurring theme.
