On the one hand, Elite Dangerous kind of sucks in terms of actual gameplay. Ooohhh, fetch quests for MMO-style grinding, hooray so groundbreaking!
On the other hand, something in the back of my brain wants to spend ten thousand dollars on building a custom controller/cockpit setup and pretend I'm flying an actual space ship. I want to blare
sad music from scifi shows as I go into a dogfight I can't possibly win to let my teammates escape. I want to explore new worlds and see cool shit that only a couple other players have ever bothered to see.
Weird game. It's like someone struck gold but they were determined to make copper out of it. Or maybe it's just impossible to feasibly make a real space pilot game while also having an engaging gameplay loop.
But god I want to fly around with like, an actual throttle and joystick and control panels and stuff in space. Say what you will but I think this is about the only game that has ever really tried to make that idea feasible on this scale.