Didn’t need to be a single planet but properly crafted 3-4 planets with true exploration would have been a much better game.
None of that full on copy/paste points with exactly same enemy placements. Or the issue where you can’t run very far from your ship before having to do a hop to generate new points of interest.
None of the would help awful NPC dialogue though.
As an actual fan I’d say I wouldn’t like it, going to different planets is part of the appeal for me, with 3-4 planets it would be more like The Outer Worlds and I would’ve just gone through the main story and dropped it.
The nearly 300 hours of playtime for me comes from how it’s like No Man’s Sky, not like Mass Effect. I have over 500 hours logged on NMS but I haven’t started it once since Starfield dropped. Starfield took over completely for me. It’s not better at everything but it’s better at some key areas and I’d rather follow the evolution on Starfield through mods and updates than go back NMS at this point. The combat and weapons and just everything about the action in Starfield is like 10,000 times better, on-foot, zero g, space. The crafting and base building is not as advanced and flexible but I really like connecting multiple bases with cargo transports and doing robot defence setups and looting for research is better than going through repetitive crew missions, and your crew ”live” on your base and it’s just better in every aspect when it comes to clutter and interactivity and role playing as a space settler with quests and story etc.
It’s not complete though so for NMS fans it’ll be a half-full or half-empty glass scenario depending on what type of person you are. You can either be negative for what you’re not getting or positive about what you got and excited about what could come.
What I miss is a cargo vehicle, or maybe remote cargo pickups. I hate slow overencumberance walks. And I want hover bikes, preferrably with vehicle combat against pirates. Would be cool and faster on-planet traversal is a must. Not a fan of fast-travel so that’s not a solution. And I want more control of green house work. Growing specific plants and perfect the output to craft specific things is fun in NMS, it’s very undercooked in Starfield. And in general I miss the freighter too from NMS. I always enjoy walking about in a huge ship, missed opportunity to not get to own one, you’re always a guest.
I think the real low point is the character design. I don’t understand why they seem to deliberately make NPCs look ugly. They aren’t procedurally created, same ugly people can pop up at the same place, someone has literally modelled them. Meanwhile they also have nice looking people in quests. I don’t understand that. Why deliberately make characters ugly? And as a nordic person I feel extremely underrepresented, I guess I need to read up on the lore and see if there has been a holocaust, something is definitely fishy in this universe.