The game has TONS of stuff to do!
The storylines are great. I spent the first few days over in Sorbago doing missions to help the Empire win the civil war there. It worked. You, the player, can influence which way these storylines go which, in turn, changes who controls what systems, what missions are available, which direction factions expand into neighboring systems, etc. The PvE in this game is richly in-depth.
I'm excited for planet surface content coming in the first major DLC, which should be free to most players.
I've had a blast sitting in high intensity conflict sites shooting enemy faction ships in freaking huge dog fights, flying along side (and sometimes against) the big capital ships. It's a big adrenaline rush when flying against them, zooming around popping fighters while trying to dodge that bad boy's massive assault directed at you!
It's not 2 billion systems. It's 400 billion systems. The closest 160 billion systems to Sol are inhabited. The rest of them may or may not be inhabited but there's a lot to explore and discover. Alien races, new factions, who knows what else is out there. Plus, if you and friends really work at it, you can help your favorite faction take over regions or constellations and repeatedly expand into neighboring systems to eventually branch out and take over whole swaths of the galaxy. Sweet!
As far as not seeing players, of course you're not going to see players if you're out in some BFE system. With the way rare trades were nerfed to prevent exploiting, not many people aren't running rares anymore. There are countless systems where there are so many players that there are thousands of ships per 24 hour period, which you can see in the news reel when you're docked. There are many systems where there are so many players that there's a big blob of ships waiting to request docking permission.
If you claim not to have seen many players, it's either because you were in Solo mode or you were actively avoiding them or something.
I've sat in anarchy systems ambushing cargo haulers, popping their cargo hatches, and scooping up cargo to sell at an anarchy station for pure profit.
I've farmed money and faction rep fighting in resource collection sites at planetary rings.
I've followed different storylines around different parts of the galaxy (some take forever to fly over to) to help the faction I've chosen progress and assert dominance in the region.
I've followed along reading the stories in the news feed about the Emperor and his dysfunctional family, the turmoil already festering around the impending power vacuum when he dies. It's fantastic to know that I, as a player, can influence how the story unfolds simply by how I choose to play the game. That is a brilliant idea and so far Frontier is pulling it off nicely.
Plus, there's more content to come!
This game is entirely satisfying and completely worth the $60.
The only major system left to rebuild from a beta state is the mining gameplay. I'm pretty sure Frontier released the game intending to completely revamp mining after the new year when most of the staff comes back from vacation.
Yes, it's quite obvious that DigDog doesn't own the game, hasn't played the game, and is straight up making up lies about the game that he obviously hates for no reason. If anyone has any questions about the game, I'd be glad to answer them fairly (yes, I have my gripes too). Just don't listen to the negative nancies in this thread who clearly don't know what they're talking about.