This. I played it a bit at launch and gave it another fair shake recently. There were some QoL mods that fixed a few major issues I had with the game, and some of the updates they added since were appreciated.

But I think the game is just flawed at its core. It's got a lot of neat set dressing around it, but it's missing some key central pillars to support its gameplay loop. I can't say it's a bad game because I still ended up sinking a good few hours into it, but both times I walked away from it, it was from lack of motivation to continue.

For me at least, I think I couldn't stop comparing its various systems to better games.

I could play Starfield for the story and RPG mechanics, or I could play Cyberpunk 2077.

I could play Starfield for the planetary exploration, or I could play No Man's Sky.

I could play Starfield for the base building and resource economy, or I could play Satisfactory.

Now, none of those other games individually attempted to do what Starfield did in a single package, which you'd think should still give it a niche of its own. But when all of these systems in Starfield just sit in isolation and don't really cross one another, it means you're basically playing several "meh" games instead of one decent one.