The popularity speaks to the contrary; a lot of people want to exist in a universe they get to see neat things. There are quest lines to help push players forward if they want, they just aren’t required and are easy to ignore. I don’t think resource scarcity is meant to be a major aspect of the game but I can see why someone might want it to be.
Every planet doesn’t have every material you need for crafting everything. But a single solar system likely has most of it. There are key elements on every planet that are meant to make sure a player never gets stranded. I guess one could argue for that to be a game mode though if it isn’t already where you very well could end up on a planet and have no way to survive.
A lot of people like the gameplay loop from day one but the initial lies about how multiplayer worked was a driving force behind the unhappiness. Once that was fixed it was a shallow experience but a lot of people would have been content with it. Instead Hello Games keeps supporting it and putting out new content updates. There are still a lot of features and improvements people would like for the game and those very well may see the light of day with the passion Hello Games has shown for improving it. That’s why so many people think favorably of them. There are a ton of other bigger studios that would never show this level of dedication and community support.
I mean if it actually had good diverse gameplay per character and allowed us to obliterate our surroundings I could see it having a player base for a bit. Trying to balance it would be a nightmare for whatever team was tackling it.
I’ve been enjoying it on Bazzite OS. When it first launched it took some tinkering to get it running stable with no black screen flickering. After a few hot fixes it started again no matter what I did until I switched to X11 instead of Wayland. Now it runs amazing. The gameplay is rough in areas but what they have so far is great. I’m looking forward to whatever UI and game mechanic improvements they introduce.