Starfield is a messy game for sure but it is (or was*) a lot of fun. Being able to just ignore the story and go off roleplaying as a space pirate, marine, smuggler or even just transporting refugees is too tempting to ignore.

I did the pirate missions, betrayed Delgado and now have a much nicer ship as my reward. Why did they lock large crews behind the skill tree?

*I am on the story mission 'Into the Unknown' trying to find the blasted source of the gravitation anomalies. I must have spent 4 hours walking (because heck knows why we cant be flying our ships to POIs...) around that icy hellhole trying to find the right one and I still haven't done it. Not fun.

I do feel it might have been better if they had stuck to just the Solar System in scope. The Asteroid/Kuiper belts would be home to the random dungeon 'worlds', pirate bases etc whereas they could have then spent more time curating planets and moons and ironing out the bugs.