Here's why the mile wide and inch deep sounds about right to me:
1. The "infinite" procedurally generated galaxy and exploration
It is undoubtedly big and looks good. But it's empty, repetitive, shallow and you have no way to interact with it. Columbus didn't go to America to watch the view, he wanted to discover and put that discovery to use, and he wanted to put his stamp on it. You have no way to leave your mark, you don't know if you're the first, second or the thousandth one to find the planet you're orbiting, and it doesn't even matter either when "you sell the data", the one thing that let's your exploration interact with the game. It doesn't matter who or where you sell the data, and if a system is scanned or not has no bearing on the galaxy whatsoever. Exploring has no purpose in the game, which is mind-boggling. You argue that taking screenshots and personal awe as purposeful, personally maybe, but not in the game. There's no gaming aspects to it at all, and in the end the most anticipated side of the game, the side devs have probably put most time into, is sadly a mile wide and inch deep tech demo.
2. Galactic superpowers and Factions
Three diverse superpowers and countless unique factions, sounds awesome. But sadly, interacting with any of them is shallow and boring and again, has no real effect on neither you or the faction. But what about friendly or allied status? Economic boom! My god, I almost forgot about those, because, they don't do anything! Dots on map turn green instead of yellow, arrows go up instead of down. Holy moly, the immersion is complete. In the end, apart from the few carrots, Dropship (haha) and Clipper plus some system permits, there's nothing in gameplay terms to be found here. There's one thing I do love, the GalNet. Player actions making a dent in the game lore, yes please. But, again sadly, the only way to accomplish this is to organize huge parties outside the game (because built in stuff like grouping, guilds or corps are too EVE, god forbid how horrid that would be, and completely different thing than doing it off the game), and for those we can only thank the community, not the game. In the end, factions are hugely generic, "crimson" this, "crimson" that, no one knows what they do or are trying to accomplish, and nothing they ever do or accomplish is going to have an effect on the player, or vice versa, hence that too is a mile wide and inch deep.
3. Professions
Play your way, trade, mine, bountyhunt or pirate, this one got something for everybody. Erm, no.. Starving high population high tech world? Im bringing in Palladium, because that gives me the highest profit! What you trade or where you do it, again, has no effect on anything. All you need to do, is open your browser, go to a ED trading site, press search, buy Palladium, sell Palladium, buy Progenitor Cells, sell Progenitor Cells, buy a bigger ship, rinse and repeat. Mining is practically the same, just slower. And effects nothing even less. Finally, the crown jewels, combat oriented professions! Although restricted to 1v1, combat in ED is fine, but if you take it out these professions are even worse than mining. No profits, no pirate or bounty hunter factions, nothing means nothing, do something, nobody cares. What about pvp? Well, to be perfectly honest, pvp is always fun, because it's interaction, no matter how simple or shallow the game is, but this game has the most broad and effective pvp-avoiding system in the history of gaming, and in addition "it doesn't fit ED philosophy". PvP is there in theory, yes, but the game makes every effort to make it as difficult and infuriating as possible, so I'm not going to give it points for having something obligatory. A mile wide and hardly an inch deep.
4. Missions
MMORPG's are getting stick for their go to x, do b, return type of missions. Well, ED takes that to another level in the nothingless void. An inch wide and no depth.
5. Multiplayer
Must... resist...
6. Use your imagination! It's a space sim!
Well why do we play games? Because we've lost the childlike imagination we once had. This way we get to experience something new, get somewhere we otherwise couldn't get. In the best case scenario we get to share those experiences with friends and strangers alike! If you have the imagination to make ED an awesome game, I can't imagine (pun intended) what you could do with just shutting your eyes. And about the space sim, if you're talking about space, as in terms of a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction, I couldn't agree more! But as a simulation of a space age utopia, it hardly does the job.
To be perfectly honest, I'd say it's a thousand times copied yard wide, with next to no depth, we're practically talking about a plane.
