Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'
I've been enjoying Starfield - but the empty planets suck, especially without vehicles. The scanning thing is boring and dumb, worse than trying to get 100% on a NMS world. It's a shame that fast travel disconnects you from the space feel of the game, but it makes the rest of the game playable. I like the game overall, but they have definitely dropped the ball on space travel. In theory it'd be cool to come across different "dungeons" etc, as in Skyrim when wandering around, but doesn't happen in Starfield because you're generally not going to happen upon them. It's not interesting to drop down to random planets.
Yeah started finding some neat stuff as I go further out. It's not that it's not there, it's just that you don't tend to stumble upon it. Like I'll go to a planet do a mission open up and scan and see some POI like 1200m away. Now do I really want to tedious run over empty nothingness to see if it's like a space hut or another pirate base etc? I definitely check out nearby POI especially if they are on the way to where i need to go.
(Still having fun in the game though and I guess later having options to at least poke around in new places will be fun and i'm curious if the critters are fixed or procedural, like will there be variants all over or just the same few species)