Elite:Dangerous and No Man's Sky were quite a disappointment for me. I think that this whole 'procedural generation' thing is done wrong. It's trying to, basically, fake content. Worked in the early days when there wasn't really any content to begin with; looks hollow and empty now when we are used to some quality world-building and story-telling.
I think any future title with PCG will suffer as a result...
What I'd love to see in LT is not really PCG but simulation - where the universe is created in the usual procedural way, and is left running in accelerated time for several thousands of years at least before the actual game starts. Empires would rise and fall; stations would be built, abandoned, discovered, re-build and abandoned again; fleets would be built, deployed, and used in wars; systems would be discovered, colonised, and exploited for resources, with all the consequences of industrial development like debris fields and abandoned derelict factories in now-empty asteroid belts...some systems would be sucked dry and become an ugly backwater, with no jobs; crime rate would naturally increase, and organised gangs would form and threaten trade in the more well-off nearby systems...and so on, and so forth, you got the picture. And you'll be there to learn about it from all sorts of clues and descriptions, and it'll all be real because it had
actually happened in the game during the world-building simulation phase.
Basically, Dwarf Fortress: adventurer mode, IN SPACE!
NMS is still awing me with some of its visuals, although a lot of stuff is rather repetitive, and some combinations don't make any sense at all from biological viewpoint
Also, where are my gas and ice giants? WHERE? Space with no gas giants, seriously?
Edit: yeah, the point I was making: multiplayer won't save bad game design. E:D is a clear example of that. It's fun with friends because it's no fun otherwise, and it shouldn't be the case.
Survivor of the Josh Parnell Blackout of 2015.