For me I feel the lack of variety from the start in terms of gameplay with much of what we have now (better FPS conflict zones, Scorpion, Settlement mission givers, etc.) purely a reaction of the disappointment in content. Honestly, I feel that if not for the backlash we probably wouldn't have seen the Scorpion until closer to 2023. Same goes for Megaship/Fleet Carrier interiors.
My second aspect of what I think they did wrong is pretty obvious regarding the lack of real development updates and pretty much putting the community managers into the firing line with no updates to development. This has greatly improved as of late with the pre-recorded interviews Zac and Bruce have been doing but I feel the development team leaders should have put communication with the community managers as one of the top priorities because they help maintain interest and most importantly a community. The gameplay teams, animators, modellers, and backend engineers work means absolutely nothing if there isn't a community there to use them and their lack of participation with the community managers previously put them in a terrible position of "We know there's issues but we have no real updates on the future beyond bug fixes" which for a game like Elite which is set in the future and so should embrace new things is frustrating.
My last point is how they are currently handling console and the lack of any details whatsoever. They need to be honest, and it is not in poor taste to use recent examples. If the game runs like trash like cyberpunk did on last gen consoles just say it. The community understands how underpower those consoles are compared to modern hardware. Share some dev content on the current state and how you might plan to improve it or explain how it isn't near the quality intended so you are updating horizons with a next gen update and focusing on bringing odyssey to the current gen hardware. Be honest and realistic with the situation and I feel a large part of the community will accept this.
Those are my thoughts, would love to know other Cmdrs
