Can I ask when you played it? I didn’t have that perception at all. There was some kind of “hub” you could jump to and plenty of stuff around wherever you were at. It was mostly about finding a planet that had whatever combo of resources you needed but that didn’t take very long either. I only played for a couple weeks but my understanding is there were quite a lot of quality of life updates between launch and when I played. Maybe you just tried it before I did. Either way you’re entitled to your opinion.