If you look at it in a bubble it might look big, but we have other space sims we can compare it to.
I was actually disappointed once I fully zoomed out.
Elite has 5 station types. If Star Citizen has that many systems with personalized stations that you can enter and many more ships than Elite plus all the other extra stuff, it won't feel as cut and paste.
Elite has a serious problem with not seeing actual people if you go even a little bit off the beaten path it seems like. I have played for about 5 days and after I left the starter system I have never seen a single human pilot since; not sure if that's actually a problem I guess but it doesn't seem optimal at least for a multiplayer game.
Keeping the number of systems reasonable may not seem as OMG WOW but it should make it easier to people interacting regularly and hopefully will still feel big.
Not to say Elite doesn't have its interesting stuff but despite being huge it kinda feels lifeless sometimes.
