Yea Elite Dangeous is kind of the same, you have to make your own objectives or you're just running missions to make money to buy ships to be more efficient at those runs and eventually even bigger ships to make more money.

I came to a realization a few years ago that I am too boring to play sandbox games. I need a tightly crafted narrative, I cannot be left to my own devices. After a long time of trying to get into every sandbox game that looked cool, it was such a relief to finally realize that about myself.

Isn't that most games, though?

Yeah once I had a fleet and some bases mining resources for a ton of money , and a ship I liked, I kind of lost interest.

It's a good game but it doesn't go on forever.

Unrelated but this is why I stopped play BotW after the first boss temple thingy.