The main problems with the game is the extremely bland and boring factions and cultures. And the fact that it seems like most fights are against the same spacers in the same modular tunnels.

I was wondering if this quote would look better in context, but nope:

Verified developer Bethesda_FalcoYamaoka jumped into the discussion to defend the mammoth planet-hopper. "Some of Starfield's planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring," the developer says (cheers, Destructoid). FalcoYamaoka continues to say that wandering through the alien landscapes is supposed to evoke feelings of "smallness." The intention is to "make you feel overwhelmed" at the vastness of space.

FalcoYamaoka really just chose to die on that hill, a hill that is most likely on a completely empty planet. It's possible for them to have 100% achieved their design goal of smallness and making a player feel overwhelmed and for it to still be boring.

Are the barren quests and factions by design too?

Having lots of empty planets is realistic to be fair, but realism is unfortunately boring a lot of the time.

Personally I'm a big fan of the game but I've been pining for a Bethesda game for a long time and I will always enjoy a fetch quest where I have to kill bandits. I totally understand the criticism (although I do think it's slightly blown out of proportion because it's Bethesda).

Overall, the game is good. It's not great (yet, anyway) but I'm 30ish hours in and I feel like I'm 10hrs in. The quest line I focused on after getting my bearings seems to be one of the better ones and while I prefer exploring in a skyrim/fallout way I have had plenty of fun just dropping by random planets to see what I can find. It's at least very obvious which planets are boring before you even land on them. Ultimately in real life I think we can be pretty confident that the vast majority of planets and solar systems would be boring as fuck. Starfield needs some aspect of realism so having one or 2 planets or moons/stations per system that are actually worth visiting is a good call in my opinion.

The only way empty, barren planets are not boring is if you put some gameplay on them that's not boring.

Starfield doesn't do that. Even if you're into geology, collecting fake rocks in a game isn't that interesting.

Sticking to that excuse, I see.

Starfield is a game about a humanity in the early stages of interstellar travel and colonization, a game without living alien civilizationals. A hard science fiction game with deep roots in realistic science (with the exception of the grav drive and the temples/powers/unity).

It would be utterly unrealistic and unimmersive to have all planets full of interesting landmarks, structures or the like. Sure it could host relics/remains of other civilisations or stuff like that, but that would change the game on a fundamental level and would break the story of the game.

I love that space and most planets are utterly boring in Starfield, because that is the truth about space, it is huge, boring and mostly dead.

But I can understand everyone who thinks that this makes Starfield a boring game, there are lots of games out there that I think are boring (GTA 5 for example) which are loved by huge crowds of people.

Problem is that theyre not empty. Every single one has colonized by identical groups

Elite:Dangerous players have been telling ourselves this for a while.

If starfield was firefly but a game I would already have as many hours as exist between it's release date and now. Instead it was a slog beginning that made me lose interest. People keep saying mods will save it like previous beth games, but fallout and elder scrolls at least hooked early 2000s me (edit: without mods) within the amount of time that present me considers a return window.