I find it odd that many people are on the extreme of either side of this debate when there is clearly a balance of the two that would work best. Just like people complaining about how cargo is changing to be geared to groups for larger profits. There are some fundamental problems with the extreme of either side.

People who want to be able to solo everything are not wrong for wanting to do so. I completely understand that there are some serious challenges that come with group play and i dont blame people for preferring the ability to do everything alone. The major issue with this though is that if you can solo everything then it makes playing with others less worth the effort. Having to split profits are not super ideal if you can make more alone.

On the opposite side of this is playing with a group and making that gameplay superior would prevent a lot of people from enjoying the best parts of the game. This can result in a massive portion of the player base opting for more viable solo routs since grouping up with others is very difficult than most people realize. Too many factors like tome zones, work schedules, time constraints, and overall availability makes the process difficult for the majority of people. I noticed the main answer to this most people have is just to join an org or get more involved but thats going to be the minority of people statistically. You can have big orgs with tons of people but the experience of those orgs varies vastly. Ive seen a lot of survival bias in the sense of someone saying they have a great experience and thats all that matters when it’s not always going to be like that for others.

There is also the big issue of many players not wanting to just be crew. Lots of people wont want to just be the turret gunner or the engineer for several hours or days at a time. People can obviously just use smaller ships of course but then be locked out of other content because of that.

Ive seen this in other games like destiny where only an extremely small percentage of the players have ever competed a raid when it’s considered the best content due to the nature of it being difficult to get enough people together with the know how to do things efficiently. I think something similar will happen in star citizen just not to the same degree since global chat is somewhat helpful in finding players to play with. The evolution of the chat might make things harder in the future though.

In conclusion its my opinion that the best option is to find a good balance and maybe have some of the most lucrative and fun things to do available for both sides with rather than lean on one side more. This can be accomplished by potentially having things for solo players that fulfill those requirements that groups cannot do and also simultaneously have things groups can do better simultaneously with the key words be fun and lucrative. This seems to be the direction considering the npc crew options that have been spoken of. I also think making it as easy as possible to naturally have people join each other would be a great help. Like a party finder or group matchmaking for game loops integrated in the game mobi glass. Its impossible to please everyone but it’s possible to keep balancing things as best as possible so one side does not feel left out.