I really really really want to like this game

Same, when it comes to games with vast scope and scale of a universe, it's either this, Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen.

Elite Dangerous feels very "cockpitty" even with recent updates, it's just not very pretty or engaging and I've tried several times to launch myself into it. VR was amazing for a little while, but still felt very "yellow cockpit" after a bit and a dark field of stars everywhere you look.

Star Citizen was very engaging for a bit, the open-world PVP, realistic scale, social, busy world and hyper-realism and absolutely beautiful environment have sooooo much potential, I log in annually and stand in a viewing area on a space station and just look out at the universe... but that's it, I don't like the janky, unpolished controls, the broken missions and lack of personalization/incentive to survive. I would even take very basic survival mechanics like base making, farming, upgrading skills and devices and places to loot and gather furnishings like No Man's Sky. There should be a reason you want to get a crew together and hang out in a personalized ship.

No Man's Sky feels a lot like "less intuitive minecraft" and I think I rather just play minecraft if I want to dig and build in a colorful, cartoonish world. The whole "harvest oxygen and swamp gas and process it with tungsten dust and then turn that dust into widgets which you refine into super widgets... it gets grindy and off-putting because it's not comfortably accessible, it's not intuitive, and that's where my biggest beef with NMS is, the lack of an intuitive direction or goal and the feeling that there's just too many lonely planets and not enough rewarding experience in spending so much time landing on each. Even if it was an actual MMO it would be more engaging.