Minus a couple small things (like every planet has lots of upload points instead of having to find an upload point on just some planets) this is _exactly_ the game Hello Games was hawking. I just don't think the audience was paying attention.
Procedurally generated universe: Check. Of _course_ the universe is therefore limited by the number of procedures and skins available in the download, duh...
Rich Story: Check. You of course have to farm the sources (like monoliths) to extract the story.
Completely customizable personal tool, suit, and ship: Check.
Peace versus War is your choice: Check.
Basically the game was marketed as the opposite of Destiny et al. It's survival and exploration instead of "closet full of boomstick!" : Check.
So I went online and found guides on how to quickly max out your ship, suit, and multitool. In other words guides on how to skip the game content. Skipping game content is boring. Check.
I've seen screenshots of people who've advanced further and faster, including people surrounded by sentinel walkers and whatnot.
I got a great sense of accomplishment when I finally figured out how to properly kit out my ship to take on a swarm of fighters (hint, the cannon is dumb fire but the burst beam is on a tracking turret).
And with a low-slot multi-tool, built poorly, I was _everything's_ bitch. But now I've built up a tool that I barely have to aim to take down large creature in moments. (hint, wide-shot bolt thrower and rail-gun mod then build up all the mining beam distance and focus, then never switch to bolt mode, the mining beam gets an invisible halo of destruction).
I did a free-flight (no pathing) and found myself in a world of hurt, and got back on path.
There are six or eight pathing pips and I've only unlocked one (you get two for free) so I'm assming eventually those other pips mean something.
I've had only one group of crashes on my PS/4 (version 1.4 had a tendency to crash if you opened your inventory in space). Other's have had more crashes. I've hat that same experience on other games, and when it's happened I've done a "rebuild database" on the PS/4 and then reinstalled and the problem went away, so that's more of a platform issue than a stability issue IMHO.
So I've seen a lot of bitching by power gamers and power levelers who then discovered (or didn't figure out) that they should be reading the text in a story game, and no, you _won't_ end up in a one-man super fortress because _duh_, that's not this game.
Quite frankly some times it is boring, which is the nature of exploration, but I've managed to sit down and play for eight hours straight... completely engrossed in the game.
So a bunch of whiners want their money back because they didn't pay attention to the advertisements. Ha Ha, sucks to be stupid. But in terms of being a "bad game"... not so much.
What I regret is that this means that the money won't keep floating in so the company probably won't be able to roll out the next chunk.
TL;DR :: Everything promised has, so far, been present in the game. But if you are a stupid munchkin power gamer, who wants every room to have one monster and one treasure, then you will be sadly disappointed. If you were looking for world of warcraft in space, this is not your game, and its developers never pretended it would be. The people who want their money back are essentially guilty of bad decision making and failure to pay attention to plain-spoken promises.