I don't think anyone's questioning that appeal. It's the long term appeal that's being doubted. In true exploration, it's hard! It takes months/years and hardship to find a new land and give your name to the animals and plants and features. In NMS, you find a new planet every five minutes. All the novel creatures aren't going to remain novel because after a few planets, you'll be tuned in to the variety. When a kangaroo was seen for the first time, it was completely unlikely anything else before seen, and unbelievable. When a spiny something-or-other is encountered in NMS, it's just another evolution simulation adapting some arbitrary parameters. When you've spent two days climbing a mountain, the view is incredible. When you've landed a space-ship on mountain number 38, the view is just another vista.
And ultimately I think it's the ease of discovery that means discovery is lacking value in NMS. It's all about the big numbers. What if there were far less planets, and getting from one to another was hard work? That you spend a lot of time on one planet, building resources, before you can make the next jump? Then each planet would be something special, scary, fantastic. How about making the game solo only and giving every player their own galaxy, unique to them? You can share it via media so your friends can see what happened to you, and experience unique adventures, which could actually be adventures because the effort required to progress could make progressing an achievement.
I think it worth noting that Elite had procedural planets, but the core was predetermined to ensure it was well balanced for fun. If you really wanted to fly out to the extremes, you could, but for most of us it was a samey set of planets not worth seeing. That's not to say NMS should be hand-crafted and identical for all, but I think less planets and more value to them would make the game more gripping. That or adding multiplayer, perhaps capped to limited numbers in any instance so that you don't get massive empires like Eve.
