Elite's biggest issue is that it never really knew what kind of kame it wanted to be. An MMO? There aren't enough multiplayer features for that. A (mostly) single-player space experience? It's too shallow with no story, so it won't satisfy the RPG fans. A space "simulator" where you just have fun flying ships? It's probably closest to that, except you can't fly any ship you want, and in fact it takes dozens of hours of grind to be able to switch things out so they're fresh and you have more fun with the game again. And the simulation is very simplistic and not all that fun either, so it's not for hardcore simulation fans either.

And because of this approach it has a bad combination of features that not only won't fully satisfy either of the potential target groups; they also often work against each other. For example the multiplayer component is a dealbraker for me: I want a truly SP game where I can dictate how I play it - where I can mod it, or at least use cheats to find my own pacing, fly different ships on a whim, whatever. But the game simply won't allow that.

But it's also not a fully-fledged MMO where you could build (or at least own) systems/planets/bases whatever with your clan and compete against others for ... idk, something.

And, again, it's just not a story game that you could play from start to finish for the storytelling and worlbuilding.

Really sad, because the potential is there to have any (or perhaps even at least two) of those types of games.