Many other games. The massive time investment to do anything, and the fact that nothing really changes. Money goes up, go to SD and buy a new ship, run around the bubble getting special effects on stuff, get bored, install game of the month or one that I haven't even tried yet.If you are a lapsed player (like me) trying to get back into the game - why did you stop playing?
For me I played rabidly for months and then got a bit bored. I had the big ship and didn't really want to grind endlessly at unfun things with it. So I reset my save intended to play through again making different choices. IE I might be a pirate or something. I played for a few hours, got bored, logged out. And never got around to playing again.
I've kept an eye on developments but for the most part they were things you'd need to grind for (engineered or AX modules etc) and if I wanted a second job, i'd pick one that actually paid real money. Station rescue missions are the last thing I recall be interested in.
Also. ED requires quite a committment in time. Whilst you're logged out mission timers continue to run, so if like me you tend to get GBH of the ears after a few minutes of playing a video game (take the bins out, watch "College/musical/vampire crap", etc) then the format of a game which basically insists on your spending at least an hour a session on it doesn't work for me.
SO. I stopped playing it.
Now, they're adding a system to try and force people to log in. Which actually makes me LESS likely to log in. It's a poor implementation which just proves they have no idea what they're doing, and can barely make it happen anyway.