I Agree with many points visually NMS is a step ahead of ED, as much as I like both Games, and less we not forget they are just games, But exploring the NMS universe is far more fun than ED, There are grind elements to both, but I find NMS grind again far more enjoyable than ED. I feel ED are just pushing forward with the thargoid threat everything seems thargoid related, everything you find is material to engineer to the thargoid threat dither dither dither... gets boring quickly! the NMS grind though has that sense of I can get what I want in a shorter space of time but is made to feel like your bettering yourself within the game, unlike ED, Yes ED combat is good, and ships aren't to bad as long as they stop rehashing the old ones which is pure developer laziness IMO. But NMS exploring far out ways ED by a long chalk as far as visuals go. I have always said to Frontier Devs "Hey guys you have 400 billions star systems to explore how about actually putting something in them" Even the most simplest of cargo cans would be good instead of the rinse repeat material all the time...
Personally I wouldn't say that NMS is visually a step ahead of ED.
Imho ED looks gorgeous with an incredible amount of detail, ships, structures, planets, nebulae.
Everything else you said I completely agree with.
ED has 400 billion starsystems but as soon as you go outside the bubble that galaxy is almost void of anything interesting to find or explore except nice vistas.
From when I began to play NMS I realy liked the abundance of stuff you can find on planets, but also the effort vs reward system is much more gratifying.
Every resource you find has an immediate purpose and you don't need to go around for hours to get enough materials to produce what you want.
Getting five fill ups for my hyperdrive takes less then 10 to 15 minutes, plus walking around getting copper is fun because you find all different kinds of fun stuff.
I also like the surprises you walk into.
Yesterday I planned to trade in my starter ship for an S class Exotic.
At first I wanted to wait at a trading post to see if an S class would spawn but thought it better to use my signal booster in order to find a distress call with a damaged ship, exchange my starter ship for that and get a higher trade in sum.
So I went to the nearest planet and on entry I was close to a trade post so I landed there just to talk to the people there and maybe get some more navigational data.
The minute I landed a very nice S class Exotic landed right next to me.
It was like the game read my mind
I now have two Exotics, an A class Hauler and a very nice A class Explorer.
Yup loving this game!!