It's been about five years, you know, they could have done at least something. I get they faced quite a few challenges during kickstarter and release, but since then there were only baby steps, and no attempts to either pull this game towards solo or better online experience, leaving it weird hybrid that doesn't cater to pretty much anyone. It just shows any lack of care or passion post prodution, only filling checkmarks for investors on features that never were actually fleshed out and remained in tech-demo mode forever. To be frank, Elite is beautiful game we all love very much, but let's be realistic, it still holds its niche because there's virtually no other games in the same genre brackets that's even worth considering. Last that could remotely compete with Elite for playerbase was X3 from 2005...Not quite, it is deliberate but its not the original vision, the history of Elite...
Elite - 1 Copy sold for every BBC Micro in the country of the UK. Statistically every single BBC Micro in the UK had a copy of Elite next to it on the desk. Why so popular? Elite was made on the basis 'We made a game we wanted to play and hoped other people wanted to play it too'. They were right, we did.
Elite Dangerous - Origination same as Elite. 'Elite Dangerous is what I wanted to do in 1984 but the technology wasn't there'.....then kickstarter...then 'investor demands....then contribution groups (cant recall name and I know it changed from one thing to another)....demands for an Open game.......demands for an MMO ('Its not an MMO')...the demands for PVP...the demands to stop PVP & Ganking (Block is the preferred Fdev response)....demands for Solo mode (originally was going to be solo)...etc etc. It all meant ED became a game designed by Committee or the Community upon release. it was trying to be something it wasn't originally planned to be because of too much input from the loudest people.
Fdev should have learned to say No a lot earlier and not tried to please everyone. They should have done the game they wanted and then built on it instead of trying to do too much at once or morph it into something else and then seemingly just leaving it 'unfinished' or disconnected (PP, CQC, Lore mainly)
In case you Don't know the phrase 'A Camel is a Horse designed by Committee'