I've said this in another thread, it's kind of interesting how Elite and NMS are on different ends of the scale in some respects, too far one way or the other.
Prior to launch, NMS developers said most worlds would be stark and dead and 10% would be teeming with life. The game came out and it turns out that almost all worlds have some form of life, most have lots of it. And it seems like quite a few people are disappointed that there aren't many/any truly dead hunks of rock out there.
Meanwhile, Elite with Horizons lets you land on most planets, and it's much more realistic in that nearly every world is dead, but if you want to explore some planet with life on it you can't - can't land on any planets with atmosphere. Which I suppose is understandable, it takes a lot more effort to create models for trees and plants and creatures than simply rocky terrain and a couple buildings (there are lots of settlements out there, some of them well-defended).
Elite is pretty awesome though. Playing online is kind of MMOish, there are those shenanigans you might be used to by now with griefers camping areas to kill noobs and people deciding to help out and hunt down the griefers. But you can also play solo at any time if you don't want to deal with all that. There are community events to take part in, repair some station lost out in the middle of nowhere. Join a major faction and help them progress their goals in taking over new planets every week, defend your faction's planets from the others. Learn about legendary engineers hiding out on various planets, prove your worth to them, get them to mod your ship gear, make friends with them, get rumors about other engineers with their own quirks.
It's pretty well designed too, I love the pip system for designating power to shields, engines or weapons on the fly. Star Trek bridge crew type stuff. Makes combat much more dynamic and interesting than just...here is your ship, this is how it handles 100% of the time.