I’m a Day 1 player, so I’ve been through every update as they’ve been released. Now from my perspective, I’m always excited and enthusiastic for a new update… but I’m not blown away. Well ok, Worlds Part 2 did blow me away lol. From my perspective though, features and gameplay have been updated incrementally. I like watching YouTube videos about No Man’s Sky. And what I’ve observed is that people who have never played No Man’s Sky and try it are blown away. It’s like they can’t believe how awesome the game is. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and if you think about how many things have been added to this game since release, this truly is an incredible game. We really do take this game for granted at times and don’t realize what Sean and Hello Games have accomplished. I have Elite Dangerous, on console, not PC, and it does outer space better than No Man’s Sky but No Man’s Sky has better planet exploration. The transition from outer space to a planet’s surface is seemless. I was excited for Starfield but held off on buying it until I saw reviews. From what I’ve seen, going from one planet to another planet is just a teleport with take-off and landing animations and you can’t really land where you want to land on a planet. So I never bought it. I don’t play Star Citizen but I do watch videos about it and I enjoy the drama. In my opinion, No Man’s Sky is the best sci-fi space game out there. And as of now, No Man’s Sky is ranked as my top #1 computer/video game of all time.
Seeing a new players fresh reaction to no mans sky always fills me with a cosy warmth. It’s an experience us day one players can never have unless we wipe our memories somehow.
I try not to compare eve, star citizen, NMS and starfield as they all aim to do drastically different things, the only common thread is sci fi and space exploration.
I was never expecting to land on planets or fly a proper ship in starfield but I certainly wasn’t expecting loading screen after loading screen after loading screen just to get out of my ship, walk from ship to port exit, and so on. It was way too fragmented and felt like space travel was a tacked on after thought.
Originally star citizen was gonna be the same, no landing with the ship itself, but animated cut scenes. This was when the game had that scope of 100 systems. Once they introduced full flight mechanics they drastically redesigned the scope and scale of the universe.
Eve took the approach of using an existing dataset (our known galaxy) and then applying economy and commerce to it.
No mans sky took an arcadey approach with it’s gameplay, rather than aiming for gritty realism, and i think this allowed them to focus resources on things that are less complicated when you’re not calculating full flight control and simulation, such as rendering existence on the fly to allow for seamless world and space transitions.
I would argue Hello Games took the smartest approach, being a game first and foremost, before trying to be a realistic representation of space flight and discovery.
The fact it’s a game first and that second, is why I love it.
If I want to even do anything remotely gameplay engaging and fun in Star Citizen, well I’ve got an hour of fumbling around a space station from the infirmary (cos it crashed again, and I was punished by losing all my stuff and being sent to hospital) and getting into a ship, praying the gui doesn’t bug out before I can accept a mission,spend another thirty mins fumbling with boxes to get them onto my ship and then mid journey my game will most likely crash, or the server will drop, and I’m back to the infirmary (when I decide to boot up again in a month). I don’t have the best rig and the game is horribly optimised, so I’m not the biggest supporter of star citizen. It feels too much like having a stressful job I’m volunteering for.
From a game Dev perspective, I think Robert whatever his name is space industries, is the worst form of militant capitalist I’ve ever seen. He would be happy to have the world become a weyland-yutani type hell hole and his vision for the game and what space commerce could look like or should look like, is kinda terrifying. I do believe he is one of those Elon types who doesn’t see dystopian sci fi as warnings but rather “cool blueprints” for the future 
100% agree. I was actually impressed that Hello Games declined offered help in making the game “realistic.” Science Fiction, I’ve read, requires a willing suspension of disbelief.
I’ve been a SciFi lover ever since I started reading adult level books. (Many, many, many moons ago. 
)