Planetary landings will add depth to the game, literally. Right now all activity is concentrated in space, with PC and NPC ships zipping in and out of supercruise and hyperspace from station to station, system to system. There are these big balls under most of the station that often seem to be sporting some lights, but otherwise not partake in the game world. But all the tea and fish we fly around can't all be station-grown, right? Traffic up and down from planets, be it shuttles or space elevators or giant capapults, will add a whole new dimension to the game.
And when we can land there ourselves it may not be something we do often. It takes time to get up and down, and fuel, and probably apply wear and tear to our space-adapted vehicles. We may just do it for certain missions, maybe certain rare goods, for mining and sampling during exploration, maybe fuel scooping gas giants. Like Power Play it may not be needed to play the game and still have a good time. But it will add depth to immerse oneself in. Without it we will just play connect-the-dots in space as we did in the original Elite.
Planetary landings (and the more realistic galaxy) was what set Frontier and FFE apart from Elite. Where landings not possible, those games would have been shallow.

S