Horizons will certainly add more content, but I am not convinced that it will improve the exploration gameplay. Very likely it will be the same passive point and wait, with text updates, just in a buggy instead of a spaceship. Human space will certainly be more interesting, but I suspect that deep space exploration won't be really compelling any time soon (possibly years from now).
Small potato shaped planets are fine, but I worry that even the large planets are now going to look lopsided and knobby. Which would be vastly inaccurate since gravity flattens all large earth-sized objects into very smooth spheres except when viewed from very low altitude.
I was referring to the tweaked evolutionary combat of the CQC experience, and not the now dated and imbalanced open galaxy combat experience. Frontier did an amazing job on the CQC small ship combat. Arguably, the open galaxy small ship combat is similarly fun, but less refined, and less focused. That is why I only fly small/med ships even in Open, even though I can afford a Python/Anaconda.
Thing is, there are oblong planets in Elite Dangerous right now, that thread, 'around the galaxy in 80 days', has shots of 2 different ones she's come across so far, and they ARE quite possible by the rules of reality as we know them, it's not a mistake on the part of the procgen. No planet in our own Sol system is actually a perfect sphere, rotational forces actually prevent that from being the case. I don't expect we'll actually see much, if any, changes in planets, planetoids on the other hand, I actually look forward to seeing the various shapes that happen with those.
As to PvP and CQC, we're in agreement on both of those I see, PvP in Elite generally, yeah, not really fun, CQC a total blast! I was actually shocked to be honest, I didn't realize I'd find it as fun as I did, definitely an excellent job by FD with the CQC combat.
I think you need to wait for Star Citizen (it's likely to be more compact) and leave us poor souls alone, I'm sure we'll manage perfectly well without your "larger player base" thanks very much.
No need to be like that, I have both SC and Elite Dangerous, and I enjoy both, and I enjoy them for both the same reasons and vastly different reasons. I actually preferred the PvP combat in SC prior to CQC, and that's really why I got it and why my teammates in SRM are into SC, the PvP aspects. I love Elite for the space and exploration, as SC has nothing to compare to that. SC is stunning visually when it comes to the hangers, ships and ArcCorp(the social mod), but the space setting in SC is just..bullocks I think sums it up best, extremely comicbookish, not at all realistic looking, not even remotely. Combine that with the 130 total systems they'll have(that's the LATEST count, it keeps getting lowered mind you) and I don't see exploration as being something that will be a thing, since everything will be explored inside a week. I literally visited more systems than that in Elite Dangerous in my first 3 days playing, I was just looking for a station that had higher than a B class shield! As I said though, I didn't get SC for the exploration, so I'm not disappointed in that, I got it for the PvP/multicrew stuff, and currently, thanks to CQC, I AM disappointed in SC at the moment. However CIG has stated the current flight model they are using isn't what they want and they are going to redo it, so I'm hopeful they'll get it so that I play SC for the PvP and I play ED for the exploration. Both games are, in my opinion, visually stunning, albeit in different ways, and the premise behind each game is unique enough that I'm quite happy to fund BOTH of them and play BOTH of them for as long as I can.
So, to the OP and everyone else, get em both, there's no reason not to if you really are into space sim style games, as each offers something unique and both are planning on offering something we've never had before, in any game, much less a space sim game.