Ok, on the topic of NMS doing something new; No, it doesn't. In a technical sense it may. The systems underlying it may be different to the systems we've seen before. In a gameplay or experience sense? Hah.
As others have pointed out, look at Spore;
Procedurally generated planets? Check
Procedurally generated wildlife? Check [Connect to internet if you don't like the initial set of assembled assets, and it acts exactly the same way].
Procedurally generated galaxy? Check
Procedurally generated empires? Check
Goal is to get to the center of the galaxy? Check
Basically shit all to do outside that? Check
Also have to laugh when "Procedurally generated grass" is considered something awesome. Literally every game that has grass [outside pokemon and other 2D titles], has that grass procedurally generated. What, you think the devs have a guy whose job it is to hand place 20,000,000,000 blades of grass? Hah, no. Its proc-genned so they don't have to bother. Same with most landscapes in modern games TBH.
And no, saying it has shit all to do isn't at all to do with quests and objectives and story and such. That's bullshit and the people saying it know it. I could write up a 'game' right now that was just random coloured blocks in a black void for infinity, and you had the ability to move, and I reckon these same guys defending NMS wouldn't defend it as having plenty to do, just not in the normal sense because there's not objectives and such, you're just closed minded. Nope, they'd complain there's nothing to do because there are no mechanics there to support anything. Oh but I could procedurally generate an infinite variety of blocks and colours and sounds coming out of the blocks and it'd be like something you'd never seen or experienced before! Except it wouldn't. It'd be something you've seen countless times, and isn't that creative.
The same applies to NMS though. Sure, its blocks are a little prettier, but as far as I've seen, Spore had more mechanics behind it that you could play around with and do things with than NMS does. Terraforming, Biosphere shaping and altering, space fights, land exploration [Even Vanilla there was a hologram module for you to do this], crop circles you could terrorise beings with. Planet busters, cities to capture, trade to perform, colonies to establish, empires to build, species to modify... Ect.
"There's nothing to do" isn't a complaint about no objectives. I'd wager most people have more fun NOT doing the objectives and doing the hundred other things that can be done with a game's mechanics than just mindlessly following objectives. Its a complaint about the low level variety and polish of the mechanics that allow you to interact with the world. Minecraft had TONS to do, and that was ignoring its achievement system. It had no objectives, no story, none of that shit. People didn't complain there was nothing to do though, because there were a lot of in depth mechanics to master. Monster hunting evolved into monster farming. Gathering various resources took a lot of know how eventually. Crafting rare items was a lot of work. Building great structures took huge amounts of coordination and preparation. Brewing food, learning Redstone, role playing with friends... There was a ton of stuff to do.
The big complaint with NMS that many people have is that it is a game about Procedural Generation, and we've seen that before. Its not a game USING procedural generation, its a game based almost entirely around procedural generation, and AI ain't at the level where it'll just create a compelling game yet.
You could create a sandbox game world based on procedural generation and exploration - but then you'd have Minecraft, or Starbound, or Terraria or... You could use procedural generation to do the bulky but mundane work of creating terrain for your awesome story - like Witcher, Skyrim, and most other large games these days. You can use procedural generation to alter the stats and look of loot to add more excitement to your dungeon crawl - like Diablo or Borderlands. You can't just put procedural generation there, and program in a camera, and call it this amazing new game that has so much to do you guys are all just close minded and don't get it. Yeah, No Man's Sky goes a bit further than that - that just proves the point that you can't though. NMS is too close to that for many people. There aren't enough mechanics we've been introduced to for people to be able to actually do anything in the game. And I mean hell, if you like just looking at paintings all day, more power to you, but a lot of people actually like the part of games where you interact with the media, rather than sit back and watch something someone else has done for you. In NMS, the features related to that seem barebones at present, more like an afterthought than the focus of the game like they should be.
Want there to be more to do? Create complex systems. Systems the player can manipulate to have an impact in the game world, and have the impact they can have be near infinite in variety thanks to the complexity in the system. For Minecraft, this was the building blocks and being able to create things, as well as redstone. You had a near infinite number of things you could do with those two systems, and amazing things you could achieve. You weren't given a goal, yet people recreated the entire starship Enterprise at almost life scale, or created a computer that played a primitive version of Minecraft, in Minecraft. And that engaged people and kept them playing. It doesn't have to be creation based either In BF3 one of the fun things a lot of people used to do was jump on MAVs to try and get into impossible places, or use C4 for evasive manoeuvres on things like tanks, or to land vehicles falling down a cliff safely. Sure, sometimes these things had a practical benefit. Others, they were just fun things to mess around with and do for laughs, yet the variety of circumstances you could use these two tools in, and the unpredictable and varied results they could have, resulted in fun for some people outside the objectives.
Without creating content like stories and that though, or having player interaction, you need to have systems for the player to discover and master, that have effects in the game. FPS in NMS could do that, as could trade, or platforming, or dogfighting, or any other mechanic. But they're not developed enough to really engage people. That's what people talk about when they say there's nothing to do, and why for many NMS seems quite disappointing. ANYONE can make a procedurally genrated world. People have proc genned entire interactive cities before and had a camera they can fly through and look at stuff with. That doesn't make it a fun game. Its what you can do that determines that for most people, and not even talking about goals or objectives, there isn't a lot of depth or complexity to what little you can do. And that's just unappealing to many.
NMS isn't some amazingly revolutionary never before seen type of game. That's the hype train talking. Its your classic proc genned sandbox, with potentially some more impressive proc gen under the hood, but lacking in interactivity seemingly moreso than even other titles in the genre, which is offputting to many because of the lack of real interactivity with the world.
