I keep seeing reference made to the implied tedium of getting on and off trains...let me tell you, that pales to insignificance when compared to the eating and drinking mechanic.
I've always been a fan of games that let you employ the mechanic you enjoy at the time, sometimes I enjoy just sitting or walking around and looking at stuff, for instance driving slowly across planets checking out the rock formation, other times yes it gets a bit hectic, the problem with forced survival mechanics is simply they don't give you time to meditate in the solitude, long super cruise times in ED have never bothered me, but if I am not in that mood I can simply not do it, the best of both worlds.
NMS seems to be going in the direction of placing mechanics in game that mean you must be doing stuff to survive all the time, pirate attacks and etc, it's a survival game of course, but isn't the point of survival to get to a point where you aren't frantically running around all the time just to stay alive, where you can kick back in that base you built and admire the sunset?
I shudder to give him the idea, but surely if you are going that far you could also implement a breathing mechanic where you set your breathing rate to the current activity, such as breathing fast for running, breathing slow when sitting down etc, you have a little metronome like device in the corner you turn up or down, sitting down..tick......tick......tick, running fast tick.tick.tick. Lol ok I'll shut up now, but if this suddenly appears in the game you know exactly where they got the idea from!