I think it's going to take the planetary landing expansion to give some real depth to the game...I suspect that's still a long way off though.
There's a million things they can do to "add some real depth to the game".
My analogy is ED is a huge sandbox, but the sand is only a few grains deep. Everything in the game feels as if it's almost stretched so thin its about to break. I suspect during developmemt due to timescales they quite literally did almost the bare minimum to cover the bases. Hence we're left with a game where each occupation consists of somewhat mediocre activity.
IMHO every facet of the game needs a huge injection of depth. And this needs to be done long before we make the sandbox even bigger with planetary landings.
Bounty Hunting
It's fascinating to see people describing themselves as a bounty hunter when in the same sentence they'll be talking about how easy it is to earn CR at a Resource Extraction Sites.
So how is this "profession" challenging for example when a RES is nothing more than a mincing machine where "Wanteds" simply turn up for no other reason than to commit suicide there? And what challenge is there exactly when even the most powerful ships around (eg: Anacondas) -
which offer little challenge to CMDRs at the best of times due to the questionable NPC AI - simply fly into the midst of law enforcement vessles to be blown up, and all a CMDR has to do it tag it with a single shot (
mine! mine!) to claim the X hundred thousand CR bounty.
Combat in general
How often do you see CMDRs proclaim how great their new ship is as follows...
Yeh, my new Vulture can blow up Anacondas easily! Is this what we really want from the game? Being able to blow up the most powerful ship in the game, easily? Should it really not be more of a challenge?
And then add to this Wings, which simply makes the task even easier. If one CMDR can dispose of the NPCs easily, four can do it even more easily!
On a side note, PvP combat is really enjoyed by some, by is very hard to comeby TBH. Why not offer areas where PvP can be easily found and is rewarded?:-
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=110531
Piracy
I'm hoping a huge kick to the criminality system will help piracy. At the moment I suspect many traders simply play in Solo to evade the risk of trolls needlessly killing them just for kicks.
If penalties for "murder" can me improved, and indeed rewards offered to traders for playing online, then the whole piracy profession is suddenly re-invigorated.
Ideally we really want human players trading online, so pirates can actually interdict them. Without these traders online, piracy suffers IMHO.
I've even proposed pirates are rated. When ever you're interdicted you're shown the individuals rating which is simple a value showing the number of interdictions they've carried out, along with the number of these interdictions that have ended in "murder". Thus as a trader if you are interdicted by a "100/2" CMDR you know you are in a very different situation to if you being interdicted by a "24/22" CMDR.:-
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=101696
Mining
Where are scanning devices? Explosives to open up area within an asteroid? Beacons to mark a profitable location so you can return there? Anything to make the "profession" more varied/intelligent?
Exploration
As I've mentioned before, exploration for me (as much as I enjoy it) is simple too safe and far too predictable.
1) I suspect virtually every player in the game could happily get to the opposite of the ED galaxy with nothing more than the dedication to press H enough times. As you plant your "discovered by flag" where is the real achievement in that?
2) I suspect every player in the game could spend months exploring, and none of them would see anything I haven't already seen. ie: Systems rendered throwing the same procedural dice.
To me exploration should at the very least require a touch more effort that pressing "H", and should offer the chance of finding something different.
(Yes I know there are suggestion "other things" are out there, but I'd question that at the moment.)
I fear it's too late now for the former, as the mechanics are in place now, but at least with the latter more content can be added to the game. Indeed before the game was even released I raised my concern would there be enough ingame content to reward exploration, and it still stands IMHO. There needs to be more variety out there. eg: Why not have the chance of bumping into a generation ship from the original Elite?:-
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=95448
Even subtle improvement could help exploration. At the moment the game actually rewards you for not even looking at what you're scanning. It makes more sense to keep your distance from objects, so you stop well away from it, do a surface scan, and then fly off to the next. It's all very needlessy stop-start and could so easily be improved with a gimballed surface scanner and video close up of what you are scanning. If you're going to the trouble of scanning something why not reward the play with letting them see it!:-
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118841
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=117901
Why not have just a handful of extrement remote platforms around the galaxy where explorers could stop off at? These could be a place to bumb into other CMDRs in very remote locations and indeed they could even offer some exporation type missions for a change of pace? (eg: Take some fuel to explorer stranded somewhere, or scan/locate X object types).
Missions
Missions at the moment are very simplistic. They need to be made far more involved and interesting IMHO. Where are escort missions? Where are exploration missions (find X object types or find/scan a comet)? Spy/recon missions using stealth/silent running (indeed Silent/Cold running used to be a big thin in Alpha/Beta and now seems almost pointless).
Why not even have missions to do more diverse things? Eg: Take part in a time trial race around a course:-
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=110009
I know it may seem I'm giving ED a hard time, but that's only because at the moment I feel it's missing an opportunity. It has the foundations to be a truly great game, but at the moment it just feels incomplete, which I suspect is down to them doing "just enough" to get it out for their Dec-2015 release date. My concern is this has risked lowering the bar for what the game will ever become now.
I hope the size of this comment is an indication of the amount of thought I've put into this subject (over several months), and that's it's not just a knee-jerk post.
You can see his exact comment(s) here, posted by myself - 
