Only Fdev is aware of the actual number's of player's in solo vs open. But I'll bet there is a significant number in solo. And I'd bet a large sum that most solo player's because they don't and or can't get involved in multi-player, have no real usefulness at subscribing to a forum such as here. Thus go completely unnoticed by those that are subscriber's to a forum. I'd venture to say that there are more player's with antiquated connections then there are those with great connections.
Most poster's here tend to think that they are the majority and Fdev should pay attention to them. When in reality, Fdev is thinking of both those that post here and those that don't bother.
ED is a sandbox game and is not only available world wide, is played world wide. However, most of the world isn't or doesn't have more than a basic dial up connection speeds. Anyone liveing in a third world country can attest to the fact that if they have a connection at all, it's not any better than a dial up connection. Which means, though they can play ED, they can't play in OPEN.
Until just recently when a start up company started offering a wireless connection between their tower and the antenna they installed on my roof. My only available connection was via the local phone company, basically a glorified dial up connection. On the best of days my connection was a whopping 500kb, that's kilo bits not kilo bytes, and my "LAG" aka "PING" was 250. Anyone with any real knowledge of connection speeds would tell ya, there's no way to get involved in any type of serious multiply with a connection such as that. My new wireless connection gives me 30Mb and a ping rate of 50. Not sure of the math, but it is considerably better then previous. For instance, RDR2 took 64 hours to download on my old connection and only 8 hours on my new connection.
Thus I can now play in OPEN and for the most part I now do. BUT, due to being in a third world country, I'm plagued with electrical disconnects, which generally happens up to 5 or 6 times a day. Which can and has caused me to be accused of combat logging on occasion. Those that know me, also know what I have to endure, those that don't know me, don't.