Starfield is what No Man's Sky was promised to be at launch. Yes, we've received near countless updates for NMS... though many are more QoL one's rather than useable content (how many time did inventory get overhauled and people's items get wiped). But what SF has is allowing people to mod planets and such. I'd take that over NMS which is more like a ship manager/minecraft builder in space.
As for the planet count. Yeah NMS has a googleplex or whatever ridiculous number. But over 99% of them are barren wastelands with pallet swapped assets. More doesn't mean better
You "hope" Starfield will be everything they say it is. The issue is that there is a meme video out there of all the times Todd Howard has lied. Like take Skyrim, their biggest game yet. They promised E3 2011, that it would be 64 bit (with requirements needing it at that), have a dynamic economy, and a dynamic civil war. 11/11/11 came and those three weren't present. It was only until the 5 year edition that it became 64 bit, and around 2015 that a modder made the dynamic civil war functional. The game never got the dynamic economy that Todd talked about, in any of its DLCs, mods, or Creation Club.
NMS overpromised for its launch, sure. But so did Fallout 76, BethSoft's previous game. And how long did it take before Fallout 76 was stable and fun to play? 2 years, give or take a few months. How long did it take NMS to be stable and fun to play... 2 years. So, ya know, NMS has the same track record as BethSoft's games at launch, so I'm thinking that Starfield will be a trainwreck like Fallout 76 was. I know that is pessimistic, but I remember Skyrim at launch and how unplayably buggy it was for the first 6 months at least.
EDIT: Found the video =
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EDIT2: The main difference between NMS and Bethsoft is that Sean Murray admitted he made mistakes and tried his best to correct them and turn NMS into a great game. Todd Howard has never once admitted that he lied or misled people to believe something would actually be in the game or took it upon himself to fix things or at least bring some semblance of the original idea to the game.