Thanks for sharing my views, and taste regarding Elite this much!
Elite Dangerous is an online remake of the old Elite, normally with much more advanced graphics and mechanics.
Unfortunately, my eyesight has already started deteriorating when it was launched, so I didn't have too much time to play it anymore.
I still hoped one day I will see better again, and will be able to play it "properly", so I did buy the game, but due its dark background, (what else to expect from a space-simulation), I was struggling playing it quite hard.
As far as I could recon, the game is just fine, and does feature everything old Elite did, with similarily vast universe, similar ship-types, equipment, space-combat, trading, trade-goods, bulleting-boards and mission-types, etc...so with a very similar mechanics to its predecessor in general.
Personally I had the most trouble with landing on planets, starbases, or other space-structures or facilities.
(there were lots of those in each single star-system)
Yes, landing would have become much easier with auto-pilot, but one had only the most basic ship and equipment at the very start, and in order to buy any upgrades, normally, one had to trade and earn money for them...and since they were quite expensive for a new pilot, (again, this is something I totally approve), I just couldn't "perform" enough successful landings to gather the money for an auto-pilot.
(not even after practicing the so called "training missions", which included landing)
And yes, since after death, one restarts from New Earth, or alternatively from a certain starbase, (forgot the name, but it functioned the same way in old Elite-games too), aka we start over the whole game again, with only the basic ship, equipment, AND with only the starting, initial 1K funds...my struggling kept remaining ineffective.
As for the game's online activity, I purchased it in it's very starting phase, right after an open Beta version, so I did notice some other human pilots occasionallly landing, launching, and even flying by while in space, but there was not a too much "alive" communication back then, meaning in-game chatting and messaging.
This however might have changed by time, after all 3 years have past since then...
(or was it just 2...damn, how fast time flies "in the dark")
Anyway, I still keep regularily receiving emails about news, events, updates in Elite Dangerous, so very likely lots of things have changed by now, maybe we don't even have to restart the game from the scratches after deaths anymore...