The lead man himself basically said everything, including detailed gameplay description of what it would be like to fly in gas giants.
When there is a game that is unique in its lore, flight dynamics and procedural content, I'd think its devs will try their utmost to build upon its core traits.
Instead we got a generic fps with generic hand crafted locations, and hand placed content. But yeah, that was what people wanted in the forums, so FDev went for it.
Since getting out was planned at its inception then that feature is also a core pillar. You don't get to decide what this game is.
The flight dynamics are in a fine position, and having the ability to get out - like you can in the SRV by the way - should no way impact that, and they don't.
NO-ONE wanted procedural content to be hurt by on-foot gameplay, and they didn't expect it because well, SRV gameplay is not much different in scale, and you are practically as close to the ground and in space terms don't move all that much faster than walking.
They tried to improve the fidelity of planets, and in my opinion it was needed. They have actually accomplished that in many ways if we just want to consider pure assets - WHEN THEY WORK PROPERLY not all those clearly broken screenshots. I think it's rather more likely the reason for all the problems is because of this, and yes they may or may not have made some poor choices with asset re-use (some thigs now hint it's a bug).
Also the sameyness of planets is not a direct question of fidelity, rather it is again a matter of asset distribution and how the procedural code is telling planets how to put the blocks together.
Generic loations? Well anything that's artificial is going to be generic isn't it? Well, like anything man-made since Elite Dangerous launched like starbases for instance. They all look the same, why aren't you complaining about that?
It is a base to build on, and it ain't really a generic FPS because how many let you bring some friends in spaceships to help you out. Just for the same reason it ain't a generic space game, it ain't a generic FPS-- because there's an entire galaxy available.