Honestly, what I want most is for ED to have inbuilt tools that cater to community interaction, such as the ability to place checkpoints for a user created race track. In this example, instead of relying on memory and everyone playing fairly, you have a genuine course and scoreboard to follow, and a track people can go to whenever they want to solo it as a time trial. Stuff like this would promote exploration to find new courses while incentivising people to go to already discovered but otherwise empty planets. Obviously there are many other options we can think of but I used racing as an example.
The thing is, as nice as ship interiors or an engineering overhaul would be none of it would sustain the longevity of the game. These are fairly static additions that will get boring quickly. What's kept elite alive has been it's community using the game as a basis to create something more. Specifically in MMO's, having a nice blend of a solo AND social driven game is core to keeping it alive. At the moment elite feels mostly tailored to a single player experience where you come across other solo players, similar in feel to dark-soul's co-op/invasions. Nothing is more evident in the fact that you still can't do something as basic as trade materials, creds or determine your own profit shares between squadron/wing members.
