With my usual metric of game enjoyment - hours of interesting playtime divided by price in $ - Star Citizen actually does rather well, for a $45 entry it’s definitely generated way more hours of actual fun with friends than most $60+ games we’ve bought.
It’s definitely also generated lots of frustrating hours, but that’s rang true for said $60+ games as well. I really wish there were more other games which do some of what it attempts.
ED was fun, but me and every one of my friends who’re into space stuff have all individually burnt out on that game due to the frankly insulting level of grind.
NMS turns out to simply not be the gameplay we’re after, so I have even less playtime in that than ED.
So far, Space Engineers and Avorion have been doing the best in that regard, still hosting a 24/7 Avorion galaxy for us in fact.
X4 has been collecting plenty of hours of playtime for me as well, but it’s lack of any kind of meaningful multiplayer with friends does lessen the enjoyment somewhat.
I use a similar measurement process for games and Star Citizen has also served me well enough.
I’ve been meaning to properly check out Avorion after picking it up in a sale some time ago; must get on it. Same goes for Space Engineers in fact.
Space Engineers has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s definitely a nice sandbox-style game, just unfortunately a bit lacking in PvE content without mods.
Avorion on the other hand is much easier to get started with, but it’s also quite shallow in regards to story and such. The galaxy it generates can definitely be interesting though, it has a remarkably robust system for reputation, organizations, etc - and it applies between NPC factions as well.
I can personally also recommend Stationeers if you’re a fan of physics (in this case temperature/pressure/gas instead of movement) sandboxes, it has an even steeper learning curve than Space Engineers though, but it can also be loads of fun.
