I think the base problem is between those players who want or like segregation of activities against those who want it 'as it comes' bracketed in the billed 'shared galaxy'- with both being simultaneously right and wrong. I think ED sits awkwardly across this, and that Powerplay only makes things worse.
In my experience, the segregation of activities is inevitable. Whether it is on servers, via some form of PvP switch, or by simply being so unappealing to a large segment of the potential player base that most players won't touch it with a ten foot pole, the segregation of activities
will happen. The conundrum for game developers has always been how to maximize the size of their player base while minimizing the amount of segregation.
There is a small segment of any game's player base that simply enjoys spewing what comes from the southern end of a north facing bull. They'll do this irregardless of the degree of effort required. An open-PvP environment in a PvE game simply makes it
easy for them, because it provides them with a massive captive "audience," and PvP ensures that their actions cannot be ignored.
Elite: Dangerous is an anomaly in my experience, because a significant majority of players are playing on the PvP side of the proverbial fence. It's always been the other way around: a tiny minority on the PvP side of the fence, with everyone else on the PvE side. This is
despite the game using a C&P system designed to be
fun for criminal PvE players to also control PvP murder. But Elite: Dangerous is also an anomaly because it uses
social filters, rather than
software filters, to decide who plays on which side of the fence, and more importantly players are allowed to
freely move from one side of the fence to the other on a session by session basis. While I'm now convinced that Frontier pulled a Homer when it came to designing this system, I still can't deny it works brilliantly at controlling the jerk population in this game.
It works by removing the unmitigated jerk's preferred audience, leaving them surrounded by
actual PvPers and those with PvP tendencies. The former is able to swat them like the annoying flies they are. The latter is either good enough to be a threat to them, or at least savvy enough to not be an easy kill. This creates an environment where they can't get the results they enjoy, so they find
other ways of amusing themselves at the expense of others.
My only thought really is that Powerplay needs to be divided, with Open Powerplay being complementary to the BGS side (which would exist for everyone) along with Powerplay themed missions that would be the ideal way to give Powers flavour- so you can then see what Powers do 'behind the curtain' that lead into the Open side. For example Archon could have slave roundups, where you pick up lifepods from recent battles.
This leads us back to the reason why I object to Powerplay - Open Only. Frontier has made it very clear in the past that any feature that isn't played by a good chunk of the player base won't get further development. I think Powerplay has the potential to be enjoyed by a large segment of the player base, it's only hampered by the bad design choices of Frontier. Should Frontier fix the bad design, especially by adding Powerplay missions, we'll see a flourishing of new players to this part of the game... but
only if it retains its mode agnosticism.
If Open Only is added to the mix, we'll see the same thing we saw when Powerplay first released: a horde of players eager to use the new content, mostly in Open; followed by a plague of unpledged player-killers eager to prey upon those players; followed a large reduction in the Powerplayer base in Open, as players reach their tolerance level for that kind of crap; followed by the vanishing of the unpledged player-killers. Only this time, when a player reaches the limits of their tolerance for that kind of crap, they won't move into other modes. They'll quit Powerplay entirely.
And when Frontier looks at the numbers, and thinks, "We did all this work, and nobody is
still playing it,"
we'll never get new toys to play with, such as what you list above. I
want to see Powerplay succeed. I
want this aspect of the game developed further,
almost as much as I want Atmospheric Landings and Elite Feet. I just don't see that happening if you gate PvE content behind a PvP wall.